Memory

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Miles decided to make a little ceremony out of returning his Auditors chain and seal to Gregor, along with the report. The traditional dignity of the office seemed to demand something more than just handing them back through the Residence door in a plastic bag. So he dressed in his brown-and-silver House uniform again, with all due care. He hesitated a long time before attaching his military decorations to his tunic, perhaps for the last time. But he was planning to ask Gregor for a very personal favor, and he would rather the decorations spoke for him than having to speak for himself.

He had qualms about that favor. It was only a little thing, taken all in all, and he felt obscurely that he ought to be rising above such petty concerns. But it mattered to him, like that extra centimeter of height that no one else noticed. He had Martin deliver him to the Residence's east portico, as before. Martin missed clipping Gregor's gates, this time; his handling of the Counts old groundcar was really vastly improved. Miles was ushered once again into Gregor s office in the north wing by Gregor's majordomo.

Gregor too must have had some ceremonial duties on his agenda this morning, for he was turned out in his Vorbarra House uniform, in his usual sharp style that was the envy of all Vor lords with less superior valets. He was waiting for Miles at his blank comconsole, his attention undivided by any data display.

"Good morning, my Lord Auditor." Gregor smiled.

"Good morning, Sire," Miles responded automatically. He laid down the data card in its security case on the smooth black glass of the desk, carefully pulled the chain and seal over his head, and let the heavy links spill through his hands before clinking them gently to the surface. "There you go. All done."

"Thank you." At a motion from the Emperor, the majordomo brought Miles a chair. Miles seated himself, and licked his lips, mentally thumbing through the several choices of opening lines he'd rehearsed for his request. But Gregor waved a small wait-please to both Miles and his majordomo, and both, necessarily, waited. He opened the security case, and ran the data card through his comconsole's read-slot. Then he handed it in its opened case to his majordomo, saying, "You can take this next door, now, please."

"Yes, Sire." The majordomo departed carrying the report on a small plate, like a servitor delivering some strange dessert.

Gregor sped through a scan of Miles's Auditors report, saying nothing more to indicate his opinion than a muttered "Huh," now and then. Miles's brows rose slightly, and he settled back in his chair. Gregor went back to the beginning, and examined selected sections more slowly. At last he finished, and let the data display fold back into itself, and disappear. He picked up the Auditors chain, and let it turn in the light, fingering the Vorbarra arms incised into the gold. "This was one of my more fortunate snap decisions, I must say, Miles."

Miles shrugged. "Chance put me in a place where I had some useful expertise."

"Was it chance? I seem to recall it was intent."

"The sabotage of Illyan s chip was an inside job; you needed an ImpSec insider to unravel it all. A lot of other men might have done what I did."

"No . . ." Gregor eyed him, measuringly. "I think I needed a former ImpSec insider. And I can't offhand think of any other man I know with both the passion and the dispassion to do what you did."

Miles gave up arguing about it; he only needed to be polite, not ingenuous. Besides, he might never get a better straight-line upon which to open his plea. "Thank you, Gregor." He took a breath.

"I've been thinking about an appropriate reward for a job well done," the Emperor added.

Miles let out his breath again. "Oh?"

"The traditional one is another job. I happen to have an opening for a new Chief of Imperial Security, this week."

Neutrally, Miles cleared his throat. "So?"

"Do you want it? While it has traditionally been held by a serving military officer, there is no law whatsoever saying I can't appoint a civilian to the task."

"No."

Gregor raised his brows at this concise certainty. "Truly?" he asked softly.

"Truly," Miles said firmly. "I'm not playing hard-to-get. It's a desk job stuffed with the most tedious routine, in between the terror-weeks, and the chief of ImpSec not only almost never gets off-planet further than Komarr, he scarcely ever gets out of Cockro—out of ImpSec HQ. I would hate it."

"I think you could do it."

"I think I could do almost anything I had to do, if you ordered it, Gregor. Is this an order?"

"No." Gregor sat back. "It was a genuine question."

"Then you have my genuine answer. Guy Allegre is much better fitted than I am for this job. He has the downside and the bureaucratic experience, and he's well respected on Komarr as well as on Barrayar. He is fully engaged with his work, and cares a lot about it, but he's not distorted by ambition. He's the right age, neither too young nor too old. No one will question his appointment."

Gregor smiled slightly. "That's what I thought you'd say, actually."

"What is this, then, some sort of spiritual exercise?" I think I've had all of those I want for a while, thanks. His heart still seemed to ache, the way an overstrained muscle twinged when one put weight on it. Like muscle strain, it would pass with a little rest, he suspected.

"No," said Gregor. "Just a courtesy. I wanted to give you first refusal."

He did not ask again, which saved Miles the embarrassment of refusing him again. Instead he leaned forward, and put down the gold chain and played with it a moment, arranging the links in a smooth oval pattern. Then he asked, "Would you like some coffee? Tea? Breakfast?"

"No, thanks."

"Something stronger?"

"No. Thanks. I have a spot of brain surgery scheduled for this afternoon. Dr. Chenko is ready to install his controlled-seizure chip. It looks like it's going to work. I'm not supposed to eat anything beforehand."

"Ah, good. It's about time."

"Yes. I can hardly wait to get back in my lightflyer."

"Will you miss the egregious Martin?"

"A little, I think. He grew on me."

Gregor glanced again at his office door. Was he waiting for something? Now was a good time for Miles s request. "Gregor, I wanted to ask you—"

The door to Gregor's office slid aside, and the majordomo entered. At Gregor's nod, he turned back to the corridor and said, "If you will, my lords." He stepped back respectfully.

Four men entered Gregor's office. Miles recognized them at once; he was Barrayaran enough that his first thought was a conscience-stricken, My God, what have I done wrong? Good sense reasserted itself; his feats of evil would have had to have been downright heroic to rate the attention of four Imperial Auditors at one time. Still, it was unusual, as well as unnerving, to see so many Auditors in one room. Miles cleared his throat, and sat up straighter, and exchanged polite Vorish greetings with them as Gregor's majordomo hurried to arrange seats for them all around Gregor's desk.

Lord Vorhovis was back from Komarr, it appeared. In his early sixties, he was the youngest of the crowd, but with a formidable career behind him nonetheless; soldier first, then diplomat, planetary ambassador, and onetime assistant minister of finance. He might be a model for Duv Galeni to emulate. He was a cool, lean, sophisticated man, very much in the modern style of Vor lord—Miles wondered if he shared Gregor's tailor—and he carried Miles's data card case in his hand.

Dr. Vorthys was one of the two recent appointees of Gregor's who was not in the military mold. He was a professor emeritus of engineering failure analysis from Vorbarr Sultana University, and had written the text on his subject. Several of them, in fact. He looked a professor, stout, white-haired, smiling, rumpled, with a noble nose and big ears. Late in his career he had become philosophically interested in the connections between sociopolitical and engineering integrity; his addition to Gregor's array of Auditors had brought in some welcome technical expertise, not that the Auditors exactly worked as a team.

Lord Vann Vorgustafson, chatting amiably with him, was the other civilian, a retired industrialist and noted philanthropist. He was short, and stouter than Vorthys, with a bristling gray beard and pink choleric face that alarmed observers about the state of his cardiovascular system. Surely the most financially unbribable of Gregor's Auditors, he routinely gave away money in lumps larger than the average man saw in his lifetime. One wouldn't guess his wealth to look at him, for he dressed like a workman, if there were any workmen so lacking in color-sense.

Admiral Vorkalloner was an Auditor of the more traditional type, retired from the Service after a long and impeccable career. He seemed socially bland, and was notably unaffiliated with any political party, conservative or progressive, as far as Miles had heard. Tall and thick, he seemed to take up a lot of space.

He nodded cordially to Miles, before taking a chair. "Good morning. So, you're Aral Vorkosigan's boy."

"Yes, sir," Miles sighed.

"Haven't seen you around much in the last ten years. Now I know why."

Miles tried to work out whether that was a positive or negative statement. Seeing so many of them together, Miles gained a renewed sense of what an odd lot the Auditors were. All were experienced, accomplished, wealthy in their own right. In other ways they were downright eccentric, outside or perhaps above the norms. More than fireproof, they were Gregor's firemen.

Vorhovis seated himself on the Emperor's left.

"So," Gregor said to him, "what do you gentlemen think?"

"This"—Vorhovis leaned forward, and laid the data case containing Miles's Auditor's report on the comconsole—"is an extraordinary document, Gregor."

"Yes," seconded Vorthys. "Concise, coherent, and complete. Do you know how rare that is? I congratulate you on it, young man."

Do I get a good grade, professor? "Simon Illyan trained me. He didn't have much tolerance for slop. If he didn't like my field reports, he'd fire them back to me for additions. It got to be something of a hobby with him, I think. I could always tell when ImpSec HQ was having a really slow week, because my report would come back shot full of little query boxes with these dryly worded corrections for grammar and style. Ten years of that, and you learn to do it right the first time."

Vorkalloner smiled. "Old Vorsmydie," he noted, "used to turn in handwritten plastic flimsys. Never more than two pages. He insisted anything important could always be said in two pages."

"Illegibly handwritten," muttered Gregor.

"We used to have to go and squeeze the footnotes out of him in person. It became somewhat irritating," added Vorkalloner.

Vorhovis, with a gesture at the data case, went on to Miles, "You appear to have left the military prosecutor with very little to do."

"Nothing, in fact," said Gregor. "Allegre reported to me last night that Haroche has given up and is going to plead guilty, trying to reduce his sentence through cooperation. Well, he could hardly have confessed to Us and then turned around and tried to pretend innocence to a Service judge."

"I wouldn't have bet on that. He did have nerve," said Miles. "But I'm glad to hear it's not going to be dragged out.

"It was a truly bizarre case," Vorhovis went on. "I'd been worried something might be very wrong when I first heard that Illyan had gone down. But I could not have unraveled the events as you did, Lord Vorkosigan."

"I'm sure you would have unraveled them in your own way, sir," said Miles.

"No," said Vorhovis. He tapped the data case. "By my analysis, the critical juncture was when you brought in that galactic biochemist, Dr. Weddell. It was from that point that Haroche's plans began to go irretrievably wrong. I would not have known of Weddell's existence, and would have left the selection of the chip autopsy team entirely to Admiral Avakli."

"Avakli was good," Miles said, uncertain if this was

a criticism. The biocyberneticist had done his best, certainly.

"We"—a circular wave of Vorhovis's finger indicated the Auditors there assembled—"do not often work directly together. But we do consult with one another. 'What resources do you know of that I don't, that might have a bearing on this problem?' It increases our access to odd knowledge fivefold."

"Five-fold? I thought there were seven of you."

Vorthys smiled faintly. "We think of General Vorparadijs as a sort of Auditor Emeritus. Respected, but we don't make him come to meetings anymore."

"In fact," muttered Vorgustafson under his breath, "we don't even mention them to him."

"And Admiral Valentine has been too frail for some years to actively participate," Vorhovis added. "I would have urged him to resign, but as long as the gap left by the death of General Vorsmythe was still unfilled, there seemed no need to beg his space."

Miles had been dimly aware of the loss two years ago of the eighth Auditor, the elderly Vorsmythe. The position of ninth Auditor, which Miles had lately held, was by tradition always left open for acting Auditors, men with particular expertise called up at the Imperium's need, and released again when their task was done.

"So we four here," Vorhovis went on, "constitute a quorum of sorts. Vorlaisner couldn't be here, he's tied up on South Continent, but I've kept him apprised."

"That being so, my lords," said Gregor, "how do you advise Us?"

Vorhovis glanced around at his colleagues, who gave him nods, and pursed his lips judiciously. "He'll do, Gregor."

"Thank you." Gregor turned to Miles. "We were discussing job openings, a bit ago. It happens I also have a place this week for the position of eighth Auditor. Do you want it?"

Miles swallowed shock. "That's … a permanent post, Gregor. Auditors are appointed for life. Are you sure . . . ?"

"Not necessarily for life. They can resign, be fired, or impeached, as well as be assassinated or just drop dead."

"Aren't I a little young?" And he'd just been feeling so old. . . .

"If you take it," said Vorhovis, "you'll be the youngest Imperial Auditor in post Time-of-Isolation history. I looked it up."

"General Vorparadijs . . . will surely disapprove. As will like-minded men." Hell, Vorparadijs thinks I'm a mutant.

"General Vorparadijs," said Vorhovis, "thought I was too young for the job, and I was fifty-eight when I was appointed. Now he can switch his disapproval to you. I shall not miss it. And along with ten years of quite unique ImpSec training, you have more galactic experience than any three out of four of us in this room right now. Rather odd experience, but very wide-ranging. It will add a great deal of scope to our mutual data store."

"Have you, ah, read my personnel files?"

"General Allegre was kind enough to lend us complete copies, a few days ago." Vorhovis's glance swept Miles's chest, and the commendations there. Fortunately for the hang of his tunic, the Imperial Service did not also give out material symbols for one's demerits.

"Then you know . . . there was a little problem with my last ImpSec field report. A major problem," he corrected himself. He searched Vorhovis's face for whatever judgment lurked there. Vorhovis's expression was grave, but free of censure. Didn't he know? Miles looked around at all of them. "I almost killed one of our courier officers, while I was having one of my seizures. Illyan discharged me for lying about it." There. That was as bald and flat and true as he could make it.

"Yes. We and Gregor spent several hours yesterday afternoon, discussing that. Chief Illyan sat in." Vorhovis's eyes narrowed, and he regarded Miles with the utmost seriousness. "Given your falsification of that field report, what kept you from also taking Haroche's extraordinary bribe? I can almost guarantee no one would ever have figured it out."

"Haroche would have known. Galeni would have known. And I would have known. Two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead. Not three."

"You would certainly have outlived Captain Galeni, and you might have outlived Haroche. What then?"

Miles blew out his breath, and answered slowly. "Someone might have survived, with my name, in my body. It wouldn't have been me, anymore. It would have been a man I didn't much . . . like."

"You value yourself, do you, Lord Vorkosigan?"

"I've learned to," he admitted wryly.

"Then so, perhaps, shall we." Vorhovis sat back, an oddly satisfied smile playing about his lips.

"Note," said Gregor, "as the most junior member of this rather eclectic group, you will almost certainly be awarded the worst jobs."

"So true," murmured Vorhovis, a light in his eye. "It will be nice to pass that position off to someone more, ah, active."

"Every assignment," Gregor went on, "may be totally unrelated to any other. Unpredictable. You'll be tossed in to sink or swim."

"Not entirely unsupported," objected Vorthys. "The rest of us will be willing to call advice from shore, now and then."

For some reason Miles had a mental flash of the whole lot of them sitting in beach chairs holding drinks with fruit on little sticks, awarding him judiciously discussed points for style as he went under, frantically gulping and splashing, the water filling his nose.

"This . . . wasn't the reward I'd been planning to ask for, when I came in," Miles admitted, feeling horribly confused. People never followed your scripts, never.

"What reward was that?" asked Gregor patiently.

"I wanted … I know this is going to sound idiotic. I wanted to be retired retroactively from the Imperial Service as a captain, not a lieutenant. I know those post-career promotions are sometimes done as a special reward, usually with an eye to boosting some loyal officers half-pay grade during retirement. I don't want the money. I just want the title." Right, he'd said it. It did sound idiotic. But it was all true. "It's been an itch I couldn't scratch." He'd always wanted his captaincy to come freely offered, and unarguably earned, not something begged as a favor. He'd made a career out of scorning favor. But he didn't want to go through the rest of his life introduced in military reminiscence as Lieutenant, either.

Belatedly, it occurred to Miles that Gregor's job offer wasn't another first-refusal courtesy. Gregor and these serious men had been conferring for nearly a week. Not a snap decision this time, but something argued and studied and weighed. They really want me. All of them do, not just Gregor. How strange. But it meant that he had a bargaining chip.

"Most other Auditors are p—" his tongue barely cut the accustomed adjective portly "— retired senior officers, admirals or generals."

"You are a retired admiral, Miles," Gregor pointed out cheerfully. "Admiral Naismith."

"Oh." He hadn't thought of it like that; it stopped him cold for a full beat. "But . . . but not publicly, not on Barrayar. The dignity of an Auditors office . . . really needs at least a captaincy to support it, don't you think?"

"Persistent," murmured Vorhovis, "isn't he?"

"Relentlessly," Gregor agreed. "Just as advertised. Very well, Miles. Allow me to cure you of this distraction."

His magic Imperial finger—index, not middle, thank you Gregor—flipped down to point at Miles. "Congratulations. You're a captain. My secretary will see that your records are updated. Does that satisfy you?"

"Entirely, Sire." Miles suppressed a grin. So, it was a touch anticlimactic, compared to the thousand ways he'd dreamed this promotion over the years. He was not moved to complain. "I want nothing more."

"But I do," said Gregor firmly. "My Auditors' tasks are, almost by definition, never routine. I only send them in when routine solutions have fallen short, when the rules are not working or have never been devised. They handle the unanticipated."

"The complex," added Vorthys.

"The disturbing ones that no one else has the nerve to touch," said Vorhovis.

"The really bizarre," sighed Vorgustafson.

"And sometimes," said Gregor, "as with the Auditor who proved General Haroche's strange treason, they solve crises absolutely critical to the future of the Imperium. Will you accept the office of eighth Auditor, my Lord Vorkosigan?"

Later, there would be formal public oaths, and ceremonies, but the moment of truth, and for truth, was now.

Miles took a deep breath. "Yes," he said.

The surgery to install the internal portion of the controlled-seizure device was neither as lengthy nor as frightening as Miles had expected; for one thing, Chenko, who was getting used to his star patient's slightly paranoid world-view, let him stay awake and watch it all on a monitor, carefully positioned above his head-clamp. Chenko allowed him to get up and go home the next morning.

Two afternoons later, they met again in Chenko's Imp Mil neurology laboratory for the smoke-test.

"Do you wish to do the honors yourself, my lord?" Dr. Chenko asked Miles.

"Yes, please. I might have to."

"I don't recommend doing this by yourself as your routine. Particularly at first, you ought to have a spotter by you."

Dr. Chenko handed Miles his new mouth guard, and the activation unit; the device fit neatly in the palm of Miles's hand. Miles lay back on the examination table, checked the settings on the activator one last time, pressed it to his right temple, and keyed it on.

Colored confetti.

Darkness.

Miles popped open his eyes. "Pfeg," he said. He wriggled his jaw, and spat out his mouth-guard.

Dr. Chenko, hovering happily, retrieved it, and pressed a hand to Miles's chest to keep him from sitting up. The activation unit now sat on top of a monitor beside him; Miles wondered if he'd caught it on the fly. "Not yet, please, Lord Vorkosigan. We've a few more measurements." Chenko and his techs busied themselves around their equipment. Chenko was humming, off-key. Miles took it for a good sign.

"Now . . . now you did encode the activation signals, as I asked you, Chenko? I don't want this damned thing being set off by accident when I walk through a security scan, or something."

"Yes, my lord. Nothing can possibly set off your seizure-stimulator but the activator," Chenko promised him, again. "It's required, to complete the circuit."

"If I get my head banged around for some reason, I don't know, a lightflyer crash or something, there's no chance this thing will switch on and not switch off?"

"No, my lord," Chenko said patiently. "If you ever encounter enough trauma to damage the internal unit, you won't have enough brains left to worry about. Or with."

"Oh. Good."

"Hm, hm," sang Chenko, finishing with his monitors. "Yes. Yes. Your convulsive symptoms on this run were barely half the duration of your uncontrolled seizures. Your body movements were also suppressed. The hangover-like effects you reported should also be reduced; try to observe them over the next day-cycle, and tell me your subjective observations. Yes. This should become a part of your daily routine, like brushing your teeth. Check your neurotransmitter levels on the monitor-readout panel of the activation unit at the same time every day, in the evening before bed, say, and whenever they exceed one-half, but before they exceed three-quarters, discharge them."

"Yes, Doctor. Can I fly yet?"

"Tomorrow," said Chenko.

"Why not today?"

"Tomorrow," repeated Chenko, more firmly. "After I examine you again. Maybe. Behave yourself, please, my lord."

"It looks . . . like I'm going to have to."

"I wouldn't bet Betan dollars," Chenko muttered under his breath. Miles pretended not to hear him.

Lady Alys, prodded by Gregor, set the Emperor's formal betrothal ceremony as the first social event of the hectic Winterfair season. Miles wasn't sure if this represented Imperial firmness, bridegroomly eagerness, or a sensible terror that Laisa might wake at any moment from her fond fog to an appreciation of her dangers, and run away as far and as fast as possible. A bit of all three, perhaps.

The day before the ceremony, Vorbarr Sultana and the three surrounding Districts were hit with the worst Winterfair blizzard in four decades, closing all the commercial shuttleports and severely reducing activity at the military one, and stranding the arriving Viceroy of Sergyar in orbit. Wind-whipped snow sang past the windows of Vorkosigan House in a hard horizontal line, and drifts piled up with the speed of sea-foam as high as second-story windows in some blocks in the capital city. It was prudently decided that Viceroy Count Vorkosigan would not land until the following morning, and would go straight to the Imperial Residence when he did.

Miles's intention to take himself off to the Residence in his own lightflyer was scratched in favor of accompanying the Countess and her retinue in their ground-cars. His master plan to get them all out the door early met its first check of the day when he opened his closet door to discover that Zap the Cat, having penetrated the security of Vorkosigan House through Miles's quisling cook, had made a nest on the floor among his boots and fallen clothing to have kittens. Six of them.

Zap ignored his threats about the dire consequences of attacking an Imperial Auditor, and purred and growled from the dimness in her usual schizophrenic fashion. Miles gathered his nerve and rescued his best boots and House uniform, at a cost of some high Vor blood, and sent them downstairs for a hasty cleaning by the overworked Armsman Pym. The Countess, delighted as ever to find her biological empire increasing, came in thoughtfully bearing a cat-gourmet tray prepared by Ma Kosti that Miles would have had no hesitation in eating for his own breakfast. In the general chaos of the morning, however, he had to go down to the kitchen and scrounge his meal. The Countess sat on the floor and cooed into his closet for a good half-hour, and not only escaped laceration, but managed to pick up, sex, and name the whole batch of little squirming furballs before tearing herself away to hurry and dress.

The convoy of three groundcars from Vorkosigan House took off at last in billowing clouds of snow flung up from their fans. After a couple of checks from blocked streets, they lumped and bumped over the last snowbanks and wound around through the wrought-iron gates of the Residence, where a squadron of soldiers and Residence servitors were working frantically to keep the paths clear. The wind, though still a nuisance, had fallen from its dangerous velocities of last night, and the sky, Miles fancied hopefully, was lighter.

They were not the only late arrivals; government ministers and their wives, high-ranking military officers and their wives, and counts and countesses continued to straggle in. The fortunate were escorted by spifry-shiny Armsmen in their many-colored House uniforms; the less so by Armsmen harried, bedraggled, and half-frozen after freeing their groundcars from ice-choked air intakes or predatory snowdrifts, but triumphant upon learning they were not the last to arrive. Since some of the Armsmen were as old or older than the counts they served, Miles felt conscience-stirred to watch them closely for fear of incipient coronary collapse, but only one had to be sent to the Residence's infirmary with chest pains. Happily most of the important Komarrans, including Laisa's parents, had arrived safely downside earlier in the week and been put up in the Residence's extensive guest quarters.

Lady Alys had either passed beyond panic to some sort of smiling whiteout overload, or was so experienced with arranging Gregor's social affairs that nothing could disturb her equanimity, or possibly some odd combination of both. She moved without haste, but without stopping, greeting and sorting guests. Her tension grew less edged when she saw the Countess and Miles arrive, last-but-one of her missing principals for the coming ceremony. Her face lit with open relief a few minutes later when they were followed through the door from the east portico by Viceroy Count Aral Vorkosigan himself, shaking off snow and solicitous Armsmen. Judging from the neat and glittering appearance of his retainers, they'd managed to avoid close personal acquaintance with any drifted ditches between the shuttleport and the Residence.

The Count exchanged a hard hug with the Countess, half-dislodging the flowers from her hair, as if it had been a year instead of weeks since they'd parted on Sergyar. A little "Ah," of pleasure rumbled in his chest, like a man eased of some burden. "I trust," he said to his wife, holding her at arm's length and devouring her with his eyes, "Gregor's weatherman has been sent to Kyril Island for a time, to practice his trade until he can get it right."

"He did say snow would fall." Miles grinned, looking on. "He just missed the part about it falling sideways. I gather he felt under some pressure to produce an optimistic forecast for the date."

"Hello, boy!" In this public arena, they exchanged only a hand-grip, but the Count managed to make it an eloquent one. "You look well. We must talk."

"I believe Lady Alys has first claim on you, sir…"

Lady Alys was stepping down the stairs, her heavy blue afternoon-skirt floating about her legs with the speed of her passage. "Oh, Aral, good, you're here at last. Gregor's waiting in the Glass Hall. Come, come. …"

As distracted as any other artist in the throes of creation, she swept up the three Vorkosigans and herded them before her to their appointment with tradition, a mere hour late off the mark.

Due to the huge mob of witnesses—the betrothal was the foremost, as well as the first, social event of Winterfair—the ceremony took place in the largest ballroom. The bride-to-be and her party were arranged in a line opposite the groom-to-be and his party, like two small armies facing off. Laisa was elegant in Komarran jacket and trousers, though in a fine shade of Barrayaran Winterfair red, a compromise nicely calculated by Lady Alys.

Spearheading the two groups, Laisa was flanked by her parents, and a Komarran woman-friend as her Second; Gregor had his foster parents the Count and Countess Vorkosigan, and Miles as his Second. Laisa clearly had inherited her body-type from her father, a small, round man with an expression of cautious courtesy plastered on his face, and her milk-white skin from her mother, an alert-eyed woman with a worried smile. Lady Alys was of course the go-between. The days were long past when the duties of a Second legally included an obligation to marry the surviving fiancee if some unfortunate fatal accident occurred between the betrothal and the wedding. Nowadays the Seconds were limited to marching a collection of ceremonial gifts back and forth between the two sides.

Some of the gifts were obvious in their symbolism—money in fancy wrappers from the bride's parents, rather a lot of different food items from the groom's, including a bag of colored groats tied up with silver tinsel, and bottles of maple mead and wine. The silver-gilt mounted bridle was a little baffling, since it did not come with a horse. The gift of a small scalpel-like knife with a blunted edge from the bride's mother as pledge of her daughter's genetic cleanliness had been quietly eliminated, Miles was glad to see.

Next came the traditional reading of the Admonishments to the Bride, a task that fell to Miles as Gregor's Second. There were no reciprocal Admonishments to the Groom, a gap that Elli Quinn would have been swift to point out. Rising to the occasion, Miles stepped forward and unrolled the parchment, and read in a good clear voice and with a poker-straight face, as if he were giving a briefing to the Dendarii.

The Admonishments, though traditional in form and content, had been subtly edited too, Miles noted. The comments on the Duty to Bear an Heir had been reworded so as not to imply any particular obligation to do so in ones own body using one's real womb, with all the inherent dangers that entailed. No question whose hand was at work there. As for the rest of them . . . Miles's imagined Quinn's suggestions of how to roll the parchment and in what part of the Admonisher's anatomy he might lodge it for storage thereafter, and how hard. Dr. Toscane, less vigorous in her vocabulary, only cast one or two beseeching looks at Countess Vorkosigan, to be reassured with a few covert palm-down don't-take-it-too-seriously-dear gestures. The rest of the time, fortunately, she was so occupied with smiling at Gregor smiling at her, the Admonishments slithered past without objection.

Miles stepped back, and the fiancees had their hands joined in the last gesture of the ceremony, or rather, each was permitted to grasp one of Lady Alys s hands, and at this well-chaperoned remove exchange their promissory pledges. And if you think this was a circus, just wait till the wedding at Midsummer. Then the ceremony was over, and the party started. Since everyone was feeling more or less snowed-in, the party went on, and on. . . .

Gregor had first claim on Miles's father, so Miles took himself off to one of the buffets. There he encountered Ivan, tall and splendid in his parade red-and-blues, filling a single plate.

"Hello, Lord Auditor Coz," said Ivan. "Where's your gold leash?"

"I get it back next week. I take my oath before the last joint session of the Counts and Ministers, before they break for Winterfair."

"The word is out, you know. All sorts of people have been asking me about your appointment."

"If it gets too thick, direct 'em to Vorhovis or Vorkalloner. Though not, I think, to Vorparadijs. Did you bring a dance partner I might borrow?"

Ivan grimaced, and looked around, and lowered his voice. "I tried to do one better. I asked Delia Koudelka to marry me."

Miles thought he already knew the lay of things, but this was, after all, Ivan. "I figured this stuff would be contagious. Congratulations!" he said with synthetic heartiness. "Your mother will be ecstatic."

"No."

"No? But she likes the Koudelka girls."

"Not that. Delia turned me down. The first time I ever proposed to a girl, and—squelch!" Ivan looked quite indignant.

"She didn't take you, Ivan! What a surprise."

Ivan, awakening to his tone of voice, eyed him suspiciously. "And all my mother said was, That's too bad, dear. I told you not to wait so long. And wandered away to see Illyan. I saw them a couple of minutes ago, hiding out in an alcove. Illyan was rubbing her neck. The woman's besotted."

"Well, so she did tell you. Hundreds of times. She knew the demographic odds."

"I figured there would always be room at the top. Delia says she's marrying Duv Galeni! The damned Komarran . . . um …"

"Competition?" suggested Miles, as Ivan groped for a noun.

"You knew!"

"I had a few clues. You'll enjoy your untroubled single existence, I'm sure. Your next decade will be just like your last, eh? And the next, and the next, and the next . . . happy and carefree."

"You're not doing any better," Ivan snapped.

"I … didn't expect to." Miles smiled grimly. That was perhaps enough Ivan-twitting, on this topic. "You'll just have to try again. Martya, maybe?"

Ivan growled.

"What, two rejections in—you didn't ask both sisters on the same day, did you, Ivan?"

"I panicked."

"So . . . who's Martya marrying?"

"Anyone but me, apparently."

"Really. So, um . . . did you see where the Koudelkas went?"

"The Commodore was here a bit ago. He's probably gone off with your da by now. I expect the girls will be up in the ballroom as soon as the music starts."

"Ah." Miles started to turn away, but then added absently, "Do you want a kitten?"

Ivan stared at him. "Why in God's name would I want a kitten?"

"It would brighten your bachelor digs, you know. A bit of life and movement, to keep you company on your long, lonely nights."

"Get stuffed, Lord Auditor Coz."

Miles grinned, popped an hors d'oeuvre in his mouth, and departed, munching thoughtfully.

He spotted the Koudelka clan in the ballroom, in a cluster on the far side. The three sisters were minus their fourth, Kareen, who was still on Beta Colony but who would, he'd been informed, be returning for the Imperial wedding at Midsummer. So would Lord Mark, presumably. Captain Galeni stood engaged in serious conversation with his prospective father-in-law the Commodore, Delia by his side in her favorite blue. Upon reflection, and some quiet campaigning from his fiancee, Galeni had decided not to resign his commission, to Miles's immense relief. Miles was staying out of ImpSec's internal business this week, but he'd had a whiff through Gregor of just how seriously Galeni was being considered for head of Komarran Affairs, and hoped to congratulate him soon.

Madame Koudelka looked on benignly. It made a nice tableau, and would do much toward repairing whatever damages still lingered to Galeni's reputation from Haroche's calculatedly clumsy arrest of him here a few weeks ago. With four sisters in all, Galeni was on his way to gaining an array of major Barrayaran clan connections by marriage. . . . Miles wondered if anyone had apprised Galeni yet that he stood in some danger of acquiring Miles's clone-brother Mark as his next brother-in-law. If not, Miles wanted to be there when somebody told him, just to savor the look on his face. Also, he wondered if kittens would make good wedding presents. . . .

A rich, raspy baritone voice over his shoulder said, "Congratulations on your promotion, sir."

Miles grinned dryly, and turned around to greet his father. "Which one, sir?"

"I admit," said Viceroy Count Aral Vorkosigan, "I was thinking of your Imperial Auditorship, but I understand from Gregor you slipped a captaincy in there somehow as well. You hadn't mentioned it. Congratulations on that, too, though . . . that has to be the most roundabout method of acquiring a set of blue tabs I've ever heard of."

"If you can't do what you want, do what you can. Or how you can. The captaincy . . . completed something, for me."

"I'm glad you survived long enough to finally grow into yourself. So, you're not losing your forward momentum with age, are you, boy?" The Count refrained from following this up with one of those we're-getting-so-old complaints mainly designed to invite the listener to offer a contradiction.

"I don't think so." Miles's eyes narrowed in a brief moment of introspection. His new calmness was still there, inside, but it did not feel at all weary. Quite the opposite. "It's just taking another direction. Vorhovis tells me I'm the youngest Imperial Auditor since the Time of Isolation. It's not a post you ever held, I understand."

"No. I missed that one, somehow. Your grandfather never held it, either. Nor your great-grandfather. In fact . . . I'll have to look it up, but I don't think any Count or Lord Vorkosigan has ever been an Auditor."

"I did. None has. I'm the first in the family," Miles informed him smugly. "I am unprecedented."

The Count smiled. "This is not news, Miles."