Cetaganda

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

There was nothing he would have liked more than a day off, Miles reflected, but not today. The worst was the knowledge that he'd done this to himself. Until the consorts completed their retrieval of the gene banks, all he could do was wait. And unless Rian sent a car to the embassy to pick him up, a move so overt as to be vigorously resisted by both sets of Imperial Security, it was impossible for Miles to make contact with her again until the Gate-song Ceremonies tomorrow morning at the Celestial Garden. He grumbled under his breath, and called up more data on his suite's comconsole, then stared at it unseeing.

He wasn't sure it was wise to give Lord X an extra day either, for all that this afternoon would contain a nasty shock for him when his consort came to take away his gene bank. That would eliminate his last chance of sitting tight, and gliding away with bank and Key, perhaps dumping his old centrally appointed and controlled consort out an airlock en route. The man must realize now that Rian would turn him in, even if it meant incriminating herself, before letting him get away. Assassinating the Handmaiden of the Star Creche hadn't been part of the Original Plan, Miles was fairly sure. Rian had been intended to be a blind puppet, accusing Miles and Barrayar of stealing her Key. Lord X had a weakness for blind puppets. But Rian was loyal to the haut, beyond her own self-interest. No right-minded plotter could assume she would stay paralyzed for long.

Lord X was a tyrant, not a revolutionary. He wanted to take over the system, not change it. The late Empress was the real revolutionary, with her attempt to divide the haut into eight competing sibling branches, and may the best superman win. The Ba Lura might have been closer to its mistress's mind than Rian allowed. You can't give power away and keep it simultaneously. Except posthumously.

So what would Lord X do now? What could he do now, but fight to the last, trying anything he could think of to avoid being brought down for this? It was that or slit his wrists, and Miles didn't think he was the wrist-slitting type. He would still be searching for some way to pin it all on Barrayar, preferably in the form of a dead Miles who couldn't give him the lie. There was even still a faint chance he could bring that off, given the Cetagandan lack of enthusiasm for outlanders in general and Barrayarans in particular. Yes, this was a good day to stay indoors.

So would the results have been any better if Miles had publicly turned over the decoy Key and the truth on the very first day? No . . . then the embassy and its envoys would be mired right now in false accusations and public scandal, and no way to prove their innocence. If Lord X had picked any other delegation but Barrayar's upon which to plant his false Key—say, the Marilacans, the Aslunders, or the Vervani—his plan might yet be running along like clockwork. Miles hoped sourly that Lord X was Very, Very Sorry that he'd targeted Barrayar. And I'm going to make you even sorrier, you sod.

Miles's lips thinned as he turned his attention back to his comconsole. The satrap governors' ships were all to the same general plan, and a general plan, alas, was all the Barrayaran embassy data bank had available without tapping in to the secret files. Miles shuffled the holovid display though the various levels and sections of the ship. If I were a satrap governor planning revolt, where would I hide the Great Key? Under ray pillow? Probably not.

The governor had the Key, but not the Key's key, so to speak; Rian still possessed that ring. If Lord X could open the Great Key, he could do a data dump, possess himself of a duplicate of the information-contents, and maybe, in a pinch, return the original, divesting himself of material evidence of his treasonous plans. Or even destroy it, hah. But if the Key were easy to get open, he should have done this already, when his plans first began to go seriously wrong. So if he was still trying to access the Key, it ought to be located in some sort of cipher lab. So where on this vast ship was a suitable cipher lab . . . ?

The chime of his door interrupted Miles's harried perusal. Colonel Vorreedi's voice inquired, "Lord Vorkosigan? May I come in?"

Miles sighed. "Enter." He'd been afraid all this comconsole activity would attract Vorreedi's attention. The protocol officer had to be monitoring from downstairs.

Vorreedi trod in, and studied the holovid display over Miles's shoulder. "Interesting. What is it?"

"Just brushing up on Cetagandan warship specs. Continuing education, officer-style, and all that. The hope for promotion to ship duty never dies."

"Hm." Vorreedi straightened. "I thought you might like to hear the latest on your Lord Yenaro."

"I don't think I own him, but—nothing fatal, I hope," said Miles sincerely. Yenaro might be an important witness, later; upon mature reflection Miles was beginning to regret not offering him asylum at the embassy.

"Not yet. But an order has been issued for his arrest."

"By Cetagandan Security? For treason?"

"No. By the civil police. For theft."

"It's a false charge, I'd lay odds. Somebody's trying to use the system to smoke him out of hiding. Can you find out who laid the charge?"

"A ghem-lord by the name of Nevic. Does that mean anything to you?"

"No. He's got to be a puppet. The man who put Nevic up to it is the man we want. The same man who supplied Yenaro with the plans and money for his fun-fountain. But now you have two strings to pull."

"You imagine it to be the same man?"

"Imagination," said Miles, "has nothing to do with it. But I need proof, stand-up-in-court type proof."

Vorreedi's gaze was uncomfortably level. "Why did you guess the charge against Yenaro would be treason?"

"Oh, well ... I wasn't thinking. Theft is much better, less flashy, if what his enemy wants is for the civil police to drag Yenaro out into the open where he can get a clear shot at him."

Vorreedi's brows crimped. "Lord Vorkosigan ..." But he appeared to think better of whatever he'd been about to say. He just shook his head and departed.

Ivan wandered in later, flung himself onto Miles's sofa, put up his booted feet on the armrest, and sighed.

"You still here?" Miles shut down his comconsole, which was by now making him cross-eyed. "I thought you'd be out making hay, or rolling in it, or whatever. Our last two days here and all. Or did you run out of invitations?" Miles jerked his thumb ceilingward, We may be bugged.

Ivan's lip curled, Screw it. "Vorreedi has laid on more bodyguards. It kind of takes the spontaneity out of things." He stared into the air. "Besides, I worry about where I put my feet, now. Wasn't it some queen of Egypt who was delivered in a rolled-up carpet? Could happen again."

"Could indeed," Miles had to agree. "Almost certainly will, in fact."

"Great. Remind me not to stand next to you."

Miles grimaced.

After a minute or two Ivan added, "I'm bored."

Miles chased him from his room.

The ceremony of Singing Open The Great Gates did not entail the opening of any gates, though it did involve singing. A massed chorus of several hundred ghem, both male and female, robed in white-on-white, arranged themselves near the eastern entrance inside the Celestial Garden. They planned to pass in procession around the four cardinal directions and eventually, later in the afternoon, finish at the north gate. The chorus stood to sing along an undulating area of ground with surprising acoustic properties, and the galactic envoys and ghem and haut mourners stood to listen. Miles flexed his legs, inside his boots, and prepared to endure. The open venue left lots of space for haut-lady bubbles, and they were out in force—some hundreds, scattered about the glade. How many haut-women did live here?

Miles glanced around his little delegation—himself, Ivan, Vorob'yev, and Vorreedi all in House blacks, Mia Maz dressed as before, striking in black and white. Vorreedi looked more Barrayaran, more officer-like, and, Miles had to admit, a lot more sinister out of his deliberately dull Cetagandan civvies. Maz rested one hand on Vorob'yev's arm and stood on tiptoe as the music started.

Breathtaking, Miles realized, could be a quite literal term—his lips parted and the hairs on the backs of his arms stood on end as the incredible sounds washed over him. Harmonies and dissonances followed one another up and down the scale with such precision, the listener could make out every word, when the voices were not simply wordless vibrations that seemed to crawl right up the spine, and ring in the back-brain in a succession of pure emotions. Even Ivan stood transfixed. Miles wanted to comment, to express his astonishment, but breaking into the absolute concentration the music demanded seemed some sort of sacrilege. After about a thirty-minute performance, the music came to a temporary close, and the chorus prepared to move gracefully off to its next station, followed more clumsily by the delegates.

The two groups took different routes. Ba servitors under the direction of a dignified ghem-lord major-domo shepherded the delegates to a buffet, to both refresh and delay them while the chorus set up for its next performance at the southern gate. Miles stared anxiously after the haut-lady bubbles, which naturally did not accompany the outlander envoys, but floated off in their own mob in yet a third direction. He was getting less distracted by the diversions of the Celestial Garden. Could one finally grow to take it entirely for granted? The haut certainly seemed to.

"I think I'm getting used to this place," he confided to Ivan, as he walked along between him and Vorob'yev in the ragged parade of outlander guests. "Or ... I could."

"Mm," said Ambassador Vorob'yev. "But when these pretty folks turned their pet ghem-lords loose to pick up some cheap new real estate out past Komarr, five million of us died. I hope that hasn't slipped your mind, my lord."

"No," said Miles tightly. "Not ever. But . . . even you are not old enough to remember the war personally, sir. I'm really starting to wonder if we'll ever see an effort like that from the Cetagandan Empire again."

"Optimist," murmured Ivan.

"Let me qualify that. My mother always says, behavior that is rewarded is repeated. And the reverse. I think . . . that if the ghem-lords fail to score any new territorial successes in our generation, it's going to be a long time till we see them try again. An expansionist period followed by an isolationist one isn't a new historical phenomenon, after all."

"Didn't know you'd taken up political science," said Ivan.

"Can you prove your point?" asked Vorob'yev. "In less than a generation?"

Miles shrugged. "Don't know. It's one of those subliminal gut-feel things. If you gave me a year and a department, I could probably produce a reasoned analysis, with graphs."

"I admit," said Ivan, "it's hard to imagine, say, Lord Yenaro conquering anybody."

"It's not that he couldn't. It's just that by the time he ever got a chance, he'd be too old to care. I don't know. After the next isolationist period, though, all bets are off. When the haut are done with ten more generations of tinkering with themselves, I don't know what they'll be." And neither do they. That was an odd realization. You mean no one is in charge here? "Universal conquest may seem like a crude dull game from their childhood after that. Or else," he added glumly, "they'll be unstoppable."

"Jolly thought," grumbled Ivan.

A delicate breakfast offering was set up in a nearby pavilion. On the other side of it, the float-cars with the white silk upholstery waited to convey refreshed funeral envoys the couple of kilometers across the Celestial Garden to the South Gate. Miles nabbed a hot drink, refused with concealed loathing the offer of a pastry tray—his stomach was knotting with nervous anticipation—and watched the movements of the ba servitors with hawk-like attention. It has to break today. There's no more time. Come on, Rian! And how the devil was he to take Rian's next report when he had Vorreedi glued to his hip? The man was noting his every eye-flicker, Miles swore.

The day wore on with a repeat of the cycle of music and food and transportation. A number of the delegates were looking glassily over-loaded with it all; even Ivan had stopped eating in self-defense at about stop three. When the contact did come, at the buffet after the fourth and last choral performance, Miles almost missed it. He was making idle chit-chat with Vorreedi, reminiscing about Keroslav District baking styles, and wondering how he was going to distract and ditch the man. Miles had reached the point of desperation of fantasizing slipping Ambassador Vorob'yev an emetic and siccing, so to speak, the protocol officer on his superior while Miles ducked out, when he saw out of the corner of his eye Ivan talking with a grave ba servitor. He did not recognize this ba; it was not Rian's favorite little creature, for it was young and had a brush of blond hair. Ivan's hands turned palm-out, and he shrugged, then he followed the servitor from the pavilion, looking puzzled. Ivan? What the hell does she want Ivan for?

"Excuse me, sir," Miles cut across Vorreedi's words, and around his side. By the time Vorreedi had turned after him, Miles had darted past another delegation and was halfway to the exit after Ivan. Vorreedi would follow, but Miles would just have to deal with that later.

Miles emerged, blinking, into the artificial afternoon light of the dome just in time to see the dark shadow and boot-gleam of Ivan's uniform disappear around some flowering shrubbery, beyond an open space featuring a fountain. He trotted after, his own boots scuffing unevenly on the colored stone walks threading the greenery. "Lord Vorkosigan?" Vorreedi called after him. Miles didn't turn around, but raised his hand in an acknowledging, but still rapidly receding, wave. Vorreedi was too polite to curse out loud, but Miles could fill in the blanks.

The man-high shrubbery, broken up by artistic groupings of trees, wasn't quite a maze, but nearly so. Miles's first choice of directions opened onto some sort of unpeopled water meadow, with the stream generated from the nearby fountain running like silver embroidery through its center. He ran back along his route, cursing his legs and his limp, and swung around the other end of the bushes.

In the center of a tree-shaded circle lined with benches, a haut-chair floated with its high back to Miles, its screen down. The blond servitor was gone already. Ivan leaned in toward the float-chair's occupant, his lips parted in fascination, his brows drawn down in suspicion. A white-robed arm lifted. A faint cloud of iridescent mist puffed into Ivan's surprised face. Ivan's eyes rolled back, and he collapsed forward across the seated occupant's knees. The force-screen snapped up, white and blank. Miles yelled and ran toward it.

The haut-ladies' float-chairs were hardly race cars, but they could move faster than Miles could run. In two turns through the shrubbery it was out of sight. When Miles cleared the last stand of flowers, he found himself facing one of the major carved-white-jade-paved walkways that curved through the Celestial Garden. Floating along it in both directions were half a dozen haut-bubbles, all now moving at the same dignified walking pace. Miles had no breath left to swear, but black thoughts boiled off his brain.

He spun on his heel, and ran straight into Colonel Vorreedi.

Vorreedi's hand descended on his shoulder and took a good solid grip on the uniform cloth. "Vorkosigan, what the hell is going on? And where is Vorpatril?"

"I'm . . . just about to go check on that right now, sir, if you'll permit me."

"Cetagandan Security had better know. I'll light up their lives if they've—"

"I ... don't think Security can help us on this one, sir. I think I need to talk to a ba servitor. Immediately."

Vorreedi frowned, trying to process this. It obviously did not compute. Miles couldn't blame him. Until a week ago, he too had shared the universal assumption that Cetagandan Imperial Security was in charge here. And so they are, in some ways. But not all ways.

Speak of the devil. As Miles and Vorreedi turned to retrace their steps to the pavilion, a red-uniformed, zebra-faced guard appeared, striding rapidly toward them. Sheepdog, Miles judged, sent to round up straying galactic envoys. Fast, but not fast enough.

"My lords," the guard, a low-ranker, nodded very politely. "The pavilion is this way, if you please. The float-cars will take you to the South Gate."

Vorreedi appeared to come to a quick decision. "Thank you. But we seem to have mislaid a member of our party. Would you please find Lord Vorpatril for me?"

"Certainly." The guard touched a wrist com and reported the request in neutral tones, while still firmly herding Miles and Vorreedi pavilion-ward. Taking Ivan, for now, as merely a lost guest; that had to happen fairly often, since the garden was designed to entice the viewer on into its delights. I give Cetagandan Security maybe ten minutes to figure out he's really disappeared, in the middle of the Celestial Garden. Then it all starts coming apart.

The guard split off as they climbed the steps to the pavilion. Back inside, Miles approached the oldest bald servitor he saw. "Excuse me, Ba," he said respectfully. The ba glanced up, nonplussed at not being invisible. "I must communicate immediately with the haut Rian Degtiar. It's an emergency." He opened his hands and stood back.

The ba appeared to digest this for a moment, then gave a half bow and motioned Miles to follow. Vorreedi came too. Around a corner in the semi-privacy of a service area, the ba pulled back its gray and white uniform sleeve and spoke into its wrist-comm, a quick gabble of words and code phrases. Its non-existent eyebrows rose in surprise at the return message. It took off its wrist-comm, handed it to Miles with a low bow, and retreated out of earshot. Miles wished Vorreedi, looming over his shoulder, would do the same, but he didn't.

"Lord Vorkosigan?" came Rian's voice from the comm—unfiltered, she must be speaking from inside her bubble.

"Milady. Did you just send one of your . . . people, to pick up my cousin Ivan?"

There was a short pause. "No."

"I witnessed this."

"Oh." Another, much longer pause. When her voice came back again, it had gone low and dangerous. "I know what is happening."

"I'm glad somebody does."

"I will send my servitor for you."

"And Ivan?"

"We will handle that." The comm cut abruptly. Miles almost shook it in frustration, but handed it back to the servitor instead, who took it, bowed again, and scooted away.

"Just what did you witness, Lord Vorkosigan?" Vorreedi demanded.

"Ivan . . . left with a lady."

"What, again? Here? Now? Does the boy have no sense of time or place? This isn't Emperor Gregor's Birthday Party, dammit."

"I believe I can retrieve him very discreetly, sir, if you will allow me." Miles felt a faint twinge of guilt for slandering Ivan by implication, but the twinge was lost in his general, heart-hammering fear. Had that aerosol been a knockout drug, or a lethal poison?

Vorreedi took a long, long minute to think this one over, his eye cold on Miles. Vorreedi, Miles reminded himself, was Intelligence, not Counter-intelligence; curiosity, not paranoia, was his driving force. Miles shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and tried to look calm, unworried, merely annoyed. As the silence lengthened, he dared to add, "If you trust nothing else, sir, please trust my competence. That's all I ask."

"Discreet, eh?" said Vorreedi. "You've made some interesting friends here, Lord Vorkosigan. I'd like to hear a lot more about them."

"Soon, I hope, sir."

"Mm . . . very well. But be prompt."

"I'll do my best, sir," Miles lied. It had to be today. Once away from his guardian, he wasn't coming back till the job was done. Or we are all undone. He gave a semi-salute, and slipped away before Vorreedi could think better of it.

He went to the open side of the pavilion and stepped down into the artificial sunlight just as a float-car arrived that was not funerally decorated: a simple two-passenger cart with room for cargo behind. A familiar aged little bald ba was at the controls. The ba spotted Miles, and swung closer, and brought its vehicle to a halt. They were intercepted by a quick-moving red-clad guard.

"Sir. Galactic guests may not wander the Celestial Garden unaccompanied."

Miles opened his palm at the ba servitor.

"My Lady requests and requires this man's attendance. I must take him," said the ba.

The guard looked unhappy, but gave a short, reluctant nod. "My superior will speak to yours."

"I'm sure." The ba's lips twitched in what Miles swore was a smirk.

The guard grimaced, and stepped away, his hand reaching for his comm link. Go, go! thought Miles as he climbed aboard, but they were already moving. This time, the float-car took a shortcut, rising up over the garden and heading southwest in a straight line. They actually moved fast enough for the breeze to ruffle Miles's hair. In a few minutes, they descended toward the Star Creche, gleaming pale through the trees.

A strange procession of white bubbles was bobbing toward what was obviously a delivery entrance at the back of the building. Five bubbles, one on each side and one above, were . . . herding a sixth, bumping it along toward the high, wide door and into whatever loading bay lay beyond. The bubbles buzzed like angry wasps whenever their force-fields touched. The ba brought its little float-car calmly down into the tail of this parade, and followed the bubbles inside. The door slid closed behind them and sealed with that solid clunk and cacophony of chirps that bespoke high security.

Except for being lined with colored polished stone in geometric inlays instead of gray concrete, the loading bay was utilitarian and normal in design. It was presently empty except for the haut Rian Degtiar, standing in full flowing white robes beside her own float-chair, waiting. Her pale face was tense.

The five herding bubbles settled to the floor and snapped off, revealing five of the consorts Miles had met in the council night before last. The sixth bubble remained stubbornly up, white and solid and impenetrable.

Miles swung out of his cart as it settled to the pavement, and limped hurriedly to Rian's side. "Is Ivan in there?" he demanded, pointing at the sixth bubble.

"We think so."

"What's happening?"

"Sh. Wait." She made a graceful, palm-down gesture; Miles gritted his teeth, jittering inside. Rian stepped forward, her chin rising.

"Surrender and cooperate," said Rian clearly to the bubble, "and mercy is possible. Defy us, and it is not."

The bubble remained defiantly up and blank. Standoff. The bubble had nowhere to go, and could not attack. But she has Ivan in there.

"Very well," sighed Rian. She pulled a pen-like object from her sleeve, with a screaming-bird pattern engraved in red upon its side, adjusted some control, pointed it at the bubble, and pressed. The bubble winked out, and the float-chair fell to the floor with a reverberant thump, all power dead. A yelp floated from a cloud of white fabric and brown hair.

"I didn't know anyone could do that," whispered Miles.

"Only the Celestial Lady has the override," said Rian. She put the control back in her sleeve, and stepped forward again, and stopped.

The haut Vio d'Chilian had recovered her balance instantly. She now half-knelt, one arm under Ivan's black-uniformed arm, supporting his slumping form, the other hand holding a thin knife to his throat. It looked very sharp, as it pressed against his skin. Ivan's eyes were open, dilated, shifting; he was paralyzed, not unconscious, then. And not dead. Thank God.

Yet.

The haut Vio d'Chilian, unless Miles missed his guess, would have no inhibitions whatsoever about cutting a helpless man's throat. He wished ghem-Colonel Benin were here to witness this.

"Move against me," said the haut Vio, "and your Barrayaran servitor dies." Miles supposed the emphasis was intended as a hautish insult. He was not quite sure it succeeded.

Miles paced anxiously to Rian's other side, making an arc around the haut Vio but venturing no closer. The haut Vio followed him with venomous eyes. Now directly behind her, the haut Pel gave Miles a nod; her float-chair rose silently into the air and slipped out a doorway to the Creche. Going for help? For a weapon? Pel was the practical one ... he had to buy time.

"Ivan!" Miles said indignantly. "Ivan's not the man you want!"

The haut Vio's brows drew down. "What?"

But of course. Lord X always used front men, and women, for his legwork, keeping his own hands clean. Miles had been galloping around doing the legwork; therefore, Lord X must have reasoned that Ivan was really in charge. "Agh!" Miles cried. "What did you think? That because he's taller, and, and cuter, he had to be running this show? It's the haut way, isn't it? You—you morons! I'm the brains of this outfit!" He paced the other way, spluttering. "I had you spotted from Day One, don't you know? But no! Nobody ever takes me seriously!" Ivan's eyes, the only part of him that apparently still worked, widened at this rant. "So you went and kidnapped the wrong man. You just blew your cover for the sake of grabbing the expendable one!" The haut Pel hadn't gone for help, he decided. She'd gone to the lav to fix her hair, and was going to take forever in there.

Well, he certainly had the undivided attention of everyone in the loading bay, murderess, victim, haut-cops and all. What next, handsprings? "It's been like this since we were little kids, y'know? Whenever the two of us were together, they'd always talk to him first, like I was some kind of idiot alien who needed an interpreter—" the haut Pel reappeared silently in the doorway, lifted her hand—Miles's voice rose to a shout, "Well, I'm sick of it, d'you hear?!"

The haut Vio's head twisted in realization just as the haut Pel's stunner buzzed. Vio's hand spasmed on the knife as the stunner beam struck her. Miles pelted forward as a line of red appeared at the blade's edge, and he grabbed for Ivan as she slumped unconscious. The stun nimbus had caught Ivan too, and his eyes rolled back. Miles let the haut Vio hit the floor on her own, as hard as gravity took her. Ivan he lowered gently.

It was only a surface cut. Miles breathed again. He pulled out his pocket handkerchief and dabbed at the sticky trickle of blood, then pressed it against the wound.

He glanced up at the haut Rian, and the haut Pel, who floated over to examine her handiwork. "She knocked him over with some kind of drug-mist. Stun on top of that—is he in medical danger?"

"I think not," said Pel. She dismounted from her float-chair, knelt, and rummaged through the unconscious haut Vio's sleeves, and came up with an assortment of objects, which she laid out in a methodical row on the pavement. One was a tiny silvery pointed thing with a bulb on the end. The haut Pel waved it under her lovely nose, sniffing. "Ah. This is it. No, he's in no danger. It will wear off harmlessly. He'll be very sick when he wakes up, though."

"Maybe you could give him a dose of synergine?" Miles pleaded.

"We have that available."

"Good." He studied the haut Rian. Only the Celestial Lady has the override. But Rian had used it as one entitled, and no one had blinked, not even the haut Vio. Have you grasped this yet, boy? Rian is the acting Empress of Cetaganda, until tomorrow, and every move she's made has been with full, real, Imperial authority. Handmaiden, ha. Another one of those impenetrable, misleading haut titles that didn't say what it meant; you had to be in the know.

Assured of Ivan's eventual recovery, Miles scrambled to his feet and demanded, "What's happening now? How did you find Ivan? Did you get all the gene banks back, or not? What did you—"

The haut Rian held up a restraining hand, to stem the flood of questions. She nodded to the dead bubble-chair. "This is the Consort of Sigma Ceta's float-chair, but as you see, the haut Nadina is not with it."

"Ilsum Kety! Yes? What happened? How'd he diddle the bubble? How'd you detect it? How long have you known?"

"Ilsum Kety, yes. We began to know last night, when the haut Nadina failed to return with her gene bank. All the others were back and safe by midnight. But Kety apparently only knew that his consort would be missed at this morning's ceremonies. So he sent the haut Vio to impersonate her. We suspected at once, and watched her."

"Why Ivan?"

"That, I do not know yet. Kety cannot make a consort disappear without great repercussions; I suspect he meant to use your cousin to divest himself of guilt somehow."

"Another frame, yes, that would fit his modus operandi. You realize, the haut Vio . . . must have murdered the Ba Lura. At Kety's direction."

"Yes." Rian's eyes, falling on the prostrate form of the brown-haired woman, were very cold. "She too is a traitor to the haut. That will make her the business of the Star Creches own justice."

Miles said uneasily, "She could be an important witness, to clear Barrayar and me of blame in the disappearance of the Great Key. Don't, um ... do anything premature, till we know if that's needed, huh?"

"Oh, we have many questions for her, first."

"So . . . Kety still has his bank. And the Key. And a warning." Damn. Whose idiot idea had it been . . . ? Oh. Yes. But you can't blame Ivan for this one. You thought recalling the gene banks was a great move. And Rian bought it too. Idiocy by committee, the finest kind. "And he has his consort, whom he knows he cannot let live. Assuming she still lives now. I did not think ... I would be sending the haut Nadina to her death." The haut Rian stared at the far wall, avoiding both Miles's and Pel's eyes.

Neither did I. Miles swallowed sickness. "He can bury her in the chaos of his revolt, once it gets going. But he can't start his revolt yet." He paused. "But if, in order to arrange her death in some artistic way that incriminates Barrayar, he needs Ivan ... I don't think she'll be dead yet. Saved, held prisoner on his ship, yes. Not dead yet." Please, not dead yet. "We know one other thing, too. The haut Nadina is successfully concealing information from him, or even actively misleading him. Or he wouldn't have tried what he just tried." Actually, that could also be construed as convincing evidence that the haut Nadina was dead. Miles bit his lip. "But now Kety's made enough overt moves to incriminate himself, for charges to stick to him and not to me, yes?"

Rian hesitated. "Maybe. He is clearly very clever."

Miles stared at the inert float-chair, sitting slightly canted, and looking quite ordinary without its magical electronic nimbus. "So are we. Those float-chairs. Somebody here must security-key them to their operators in the first place, right? Would I be making too silly a wild-ass guess if I suggested that person was the Celestial Lady?"

"That is correct, Lord Vorkosigan."

"So you have the override, and could encode this to anybody."

"Not to anybody. Only to any haut-woman."

"Ilsum Kety is expecting the return of this haut-bubble, after the ceremonies, with a haut-woman and a Barrayaran prisoner, yes?" He took a deep breath. "I think ... we should not disappoint him."