Miles rose along with Benin, and paused. "Ghem-Colonel... may I make a personal suggestion?"

Benin tilted his head in curious permission.

"You have good reason to suspect you have a little problem somewhere overhead. But you don"t know where yet. If I were you, I"d go straight to the top. Make personal contact with your Emperor. It"s the only way you can be sure you"ve capped the murderer."

Did Benin turn pale, beneath his face paint? No way to tell. "That high over-Lord Vorkosigan, I can hardly claim casual acquaintance with my celestial master."

"This isn"t friendship. It"s business, and it"s his business. If you truly mean to be useful to him, it"s time you began. Emperors are only human." Well, Emperor Gregor was. The Cetagandan emperor was haut-human. Miles hoped that still counted. "Ba Lura must have been more to him than a piece of the furniture, it served him for over fifty years. Make no accusations, merely request that he protect your investigation from being quashed. Strike first, today, before... someone... begins to fear your competence." If you"re going to cover your a.s.s, Benin, by G.o.d do it right.

"I will... consider your advice."

"Good hunting," Miles nodded cheerfully, as if it wasn"t his problem. "Big game is the best. Think of the honor."

Benin bowed himself out with a small, wry smile, to be escorted from the building by the emba.s.sy guard.

"See you around," Miles called.

"You may be sure of it." Benin"s parting wave was almost, but not quite, a salute.

Miles"s desire to dissolve into an exhausted puddle on the corridor floor was delayed by the arrival of Vorob"yev, doubtless from his listening post below-stairs, and another man. Ivan hovered behind them with an expression of morose anxiety.

The other man was middle-aged, middle-sized, and wearing the loose bodysuit and well-cut robes of a Cetagandan ghem-lord, in middle colors. They hung comfortably upon him, but his face was free of colored paint, and the haircut he sported was that of a Barrayaran officer. His eyes were... interested.

"A very well conducted interview, Lord Vorkosigan," said Vorob"yev, relieving Miles"s mind. Slightly. An even wager who had interviewed whom, just now.

"Ghem-Colonel Benin obviously has a lot on his mind," said Miles. "Ah..." He glanced at Vorob"yev"s companion.

"Allow me to introduce Lord Vorreedi," said the amba.s.sador. "Lord Vorkosigan, of course. Lord Vorreedi is our particular expert in understanding the activities of the ghem-comrades, in all their mult.i.tude of arenas."

Which was diplomatic-talk for Head Spy. Miles nodded careful greetings. "Pleased to meet you at last, sir."

"And you," Vorreedi returned. "I regret not arriving sooner. The late empress"s obsequies were expected to be rather more sedate than this. I didn"t know of your keen interest in civil security, Lord Vorkosigan. Would you like us to arrange you a tour of the local police organizations?"

"I"m afraid time will not permit. But yes, if I hadn"t been able to get into a military career, I think police work might have been my next choice."

A uniformed corporal from the emba.s.sy"s ImpSec office approached, and motioned away his civilian-clothed superior. They conferred in low tones, and the corporal handed over a sheaf of colored papers to the protocol officer, who in turn handed them to the amba.s.sador with a few words. Vorob"yev, his brows climbing, turned to Ivan.

"Lord Vorpatril. Some invitations have arrived for you this morning."

Ivan took the sheets, their colors and perfumes clashing, and leafed through them in puzzlement. "Invitations?"

"Lady Benello invites you to a private dinner, Lady Arvin invites you to a fire-pattern- viewing party-both tonight-and Lady Senden invites you to observe a court-dance practice, this afternoon."

"Who?"

"Lady Senden," the protocol officer supplied, "is Lady Benello"s married sister, according to last night"s background checks." He gave Ivan an odd look. "Just what did you do to merit this sudden popularity, Lord Vorpatril?"

Ivan held the papers gingerly, smiling thinly, by which Miles deduced he hadn"t told the protocol officer quite everything about last night"s adventure. "I"m not sure, sir." Ivan caught Miles"s suffused gaze, and reddened slightly.

Miles craned his neck. "Do any of these women have interesting connections at the Celestial Garden, do you suppose? Or friends who do?"

"Your name isn"t on these, coz," Ivan pointed out ruthlessly, waving the invitations, all hand- calligraphed in a.s.sorted colored inks. A faintly cheerful look was starting in his eyes, displacing his earlier glum dread.

"Perhaps some more background checks would be in order, my lord?" murmured the protocol officer to the amba.s.sador.

"If you please, Colonel."

The protocol officer left with his corporal. Miles, with a grateful parting wave to Vorob"yev, tagged along after Ivan, who clutched the colored papers firmly and eyed him with suspicion.

"Mine," Ivan a.s.serted, as soon as they were out of earshot. "You have ghem-Colonel Benin, who is more to your taste anyway."

"There are a lot of ghem-women here in the capital who serve as ladies-in-waiting to the haut- women in the Celestial Garden, is all," Miles said. "I"d... like to meet that ghem-lady I went walking with last night, for instance, but she didn"t give me her name."

"I doubt many of Yenaro"s crowd have celestial connections."

"I think this one was an exception. Though the people I really want to meet are the satrap governors. Face-to-face."

"You"d have a better chance at that at one of the official functions."

"Oh, yes. I"m planning on it."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

The Celestial Garden was not quite so intimidating on the second visit, Miles a.s.sured himself. This time they were not lost in a great stream of galactic envoys, but were only a little party of three. Miles, Amba.s.sador Vorob"yev, and Mia Maz were admitted through a side gate, almost privately, and escorted by a single servitor to their destination.

The trio made a good picture. Miles and the amba.s.sador wore their ultra-formal House blacks again. Maz wore black linings and pure white over-robes, combining the two mourning colors, acknowledging the Cetagandan hue without over-stepping the boundaries of haut-privilege. No accident that it also displayed her own dark hair and lively complexion to advantage, and set off her two companions as well. Her dimple flashed with her smile of antic.i.p.ation and pleasure, directed over Miles"s head to Amba.s.sador Vorob"yev. Miles, between them, felt like an unruly lad being escorted firmly by his two parents. Vorob"yev was taking no chances of unauthorized violations of etiquette today.

The offering of the elegiac poetry to the dead empress was not a ceremony normally attended by galactic delegates, with the exception of a very few high-ranking Cetagandan allies. Miles did not qualify on either count, and Vorob"yev had been forced to pull every string he owned to get them this invitation. Ivan had ducked out, pleading weariness from the court-dance practice and the fire-viewing parties of yesterday, and the excuse of four more invitations for this afternoon and evening. It was a suspiciously smug weariness. Miles had let him escape, his s.a.d.i.s.tic urge to make Ivan sit along with him through what promised to be an interminable afternoon and evening blunted by the reflection that his cousin could do little to contribute to what was essentially an information-gathering expedition. And Ivan might-just might-pick up some useful new contacts among the ghem. Vorob"yev had subst.i.tuted the Vervani woman, to her obvious delight, and Miles"s benefit.

To Miles"s relief the ceremony was not carried out in the rotunda, with all its alarming a.s.sociations, where the empress"s body still lay. Neither did the haut use anything so cra.s.s as an auditorium, with people packed in efficient rows. Instead the servitor took them to a-dell, Miles supposed he might call it, a bowl in the garden lined with flowers, plants, and hundreds of little box-seat arrangements overlooking a complex array of daises and platforms at the bottom. As befitted their rank, or lack of it, the servitor placed the Barrayaran party in the last and highest row, three quarters of the way around from the best frontal view. This suited Miles-he could watch nearly the whole audience without being over-looked himself. The low benches were flawless wood, hand-smoothed to a high polish. Mia Maz, bowed gallantly to her seat by Vorob"yev, patted her skirts and stared around, bright-eyed.

Miles stared too, much less bright-eyed-he"d spent a great deal of time the last day peering into his comconsole display, swotting up background in hopes of finding an end to this tangle. The haut were filtering in to their places, men in flowing snowy robes escorting white bubbles. The dell was beginning to resemble a great bank of white climbing roses in a frenzy of bloom. Miles finally saw the purpose of the box seats-it gave room for the bubbles. Was Rian among them?

"Will the women speak first, or how do they organize this?" Miles asked Maz.

"The women won"t speak at all, today," said Maz. "They had their own ceremony yesterday. They"ll start with the men of lowest rank and work up through the constellations."

Ending with the satrap governors. All of them. Miles settled himself with the patience of a panther in a tree. The men he had come to see were filing into the bottom of the bowl even now. If Miles had owned a tail, it would have twitched. As it was, he stilled a tapping boot.

The eight satrap governors, a.s.sisted by their highest-ranking ghem-officers, sank into seats around a raised reserved dais. Miles squinted, wishing for rangefinder binoculars-not that he could have carried them past the tight security. With a twinge of sympathy he wondered what ghem-Colonel Benin was doing right now, and if Cetagandan security went as frantic behind the scenes as Barrayaran security did at any ceremony involving Emperor Gregor. He could just picture them.

But he had what he"d come for-all eight of his suspects, artistically arranged on display. He studied his top four with particular care.

The governor of Mu Ceta was one of the Degtiar constellation, the present emperor"s half- uncle, being half-brother to the late empress. Maz too watched closely as he settled his aged body creakily into his seat, and brushed away his attendants with jerky, irritated motions. The governor of Mu Ceta had been at his present post only two years, replacing the governor who had been recalled, and subsequently quietly exiled into retirement after the Vervain invasion debacle. The man was very old, and very experienced, and had been chosen explicitly to calm Vervani fears of a re-match. Not, Miles thought, the treasonous type. Yet by haut Rian"s testimony, every man in the circle had taken at least one step over the line, secretly receiving the unauthorized gene banks.

The governor of Rho Ceta, Barrayar"s nearest neighbor, worried Miles a great deal more. The haut Este Rond was middle-aged and vigorous, haut-tall though unusually heavy. His ghem-officer stood well back from his governor"s sweeping movements. Rond"s general effect was bullish. And he was bullishly tenacious in his efforts, diplomatic and otherwise, to improve Cetaganda"s trade access through the Barrayaran-controlled Komarr wormhole jumps. The Rond was one of the more junior haut- constellations, seeking growth. Este Rond was a hot prospect for sure.

The governor of Xi Ceta, Maniacs neighbor, wafted in, proud-nosed. The haut Slyke Giaja was what Miles thought of as a typical haut-lord, tall and lean and faintly effeminate. Arrogant, as befit a younger half-brother of the emperor. And dangerous. Young enough to be a possibility, though older than Este Rond.

The youngest suspect, the haut Ilsum Kety governor of Sigma Ceta, was a mere stripling of forty-five or so. In body type he was much like Slyke Giaja, who was in fact a cousin of his through their mothers" who were half-sisters though of different constellations. Haut family trees were even more confusing than the Vors". It would take a full-time geneticist to keep track of all the semi-siblings.

Eight white bubbles floated into the basin, and took up an arc to the left of the circle of satrap governors. The ghem-officers took up a similar arc to the right. They, Miles realized, were going to get to stand through the entire afternoon"s ceremony. Being a ghem-general wasn"t all blood and beer. But could any of those bubbles be... ?

"Who are those ladies?" Miles asked Maz, nodding toward the octet.

"They are the satrap governors" consorts."

"I... thought the haut did not marry."

"There"s no personal relationship implied in the t.i.tle. They are appointed centrally, just like the governors themselves."

"Not by the governors? What"s their function? Social secretaries?"

"Not at all. They are chosen by the empress, to be her representatives in all dealings having to do with the Star Creches business. All the haut living on a satrap planet send their genetic contracts through the consorts to the central gene bank here at the Celestial Garden, where the fertilizations and any genetic alterations take place. The consorts also oversee the return of the uterine replicators with the growing fetuses to their parents on the outlying planets. That has to be the strangest cargo run in the Cetagandan empire-once a year for each planet."

"Do the consorts travel back to Eta Ceta once a year, in that case, to personally accompany their charges?"

"Yes."

"Ah." Miles settled back, smiling fixedly. Now; he saw how the Empress Lisbet had set up her scheme, the living channels she had used to communicate with each satrap governor. If every one of those consorts wasn"t in on this plot to her eyebrows, he"d eat his boots. Sixteen. I have sixteen suspects, not eight. Oh, G.o.d. And he"d come here to cut down his list. But it followed logically that Ba Lura"s murderer might not have had to borrow or steal a haut-lady"s bubble. She might have owned one already. "Do the consort-ladies work closely with their satrap governors?"

Maz shrugged. "I really don"t know. Not necessarily, I suppose. Their areas of responsibility are highly segregated."

A majordomo took center stage, and made a silent motion. Every voice in the dell went still. Every haut-lord dropped to his knees on padded rests thoughtfully provided in front of the benches. All the white bubbles bobbled-Miles still wondered how many of the haut-women cheated and cut corners at these ceremonies. After an antic.i.p.atory hush, the emperor himself arrived, escorted by guards in white and bloodred uniforms, zebra-faced, of terrible aspect if you took them seriously. Miles did, not for the face paint, but in certain knowledge of just how nervous and twitchy in the trigger-finger such an awesome responsibility could make a man.

It was the first time in his life Miles had seen the Cetagandan emperor in the flesh, and he studied the man as avidly as he had studied the satrap governors. Emperor the haut Fletchir Giaja was tall, lean, hawk-faced like his demi-cousins, his hair still untouched by gray despite his seventy-odd years. A survivor-he had succeeded to his rank at a fantastically young age for a Cetagandan, less than thirty, and held on through a wobbly youth to an apparently iron-secure mid-life. He seated himself with great a.s.surance and grace of movement, serene and confident. Ringed by bowing traitors. Miles"s nostrils flared, and he took a breath, dizzy with the irony. At another signal from the majordomo, everyone regained their seats, still in that remarkable silence.

The presentation of the elegiac poems in honor of the late haut Lisbet Degtiar began with the heads of the lowest-ranking constellations present. Each poem had to fit into one of half a dozen correct formal types, all mercifully short. Miles was extremely impressed with the elegance, beauty, and apparent deep feeling of about the first ten offerings. The recitation had to be one of those great formal ordeals, like taking an oath or getting married, in which the preparations wildly outma.s.sed the moment of actualization. Great care was taken with movement, voice, and imperceptible variations of what to Miles"s eye were identical white dress robes. But gradually, Miles began to be aware of stock phrases, repeated ideas; by the thirtieth man, his eyes were starting to glaze over. More than ever Miles wished Ivan by his side, suffering along with him.

Maz whispered an occasional interpretation or gloss, which helped fend off creeping drowsiness-Miles had not slept well last night. The satrap governors were all doing good imitations of men stuffed and mounted, except for the ancient governor of Mu Ceta, who slumped in open boredom, and watched through sardonic slitted eyes as his juniors, i.e., everyone else there, performed with various degrees of flop-sweat. The older and more experienced men, as they came on, at least had better deliveries, if not necessarily better poems.

Miles meditated on the character of Lord X, trying to match it with one of the eight faces ranged before him. The murderer/traitor was something of a tactical genius. He had been presented with an unantic.i.p.ated opportunity to gain power, had committed rapidly to an all-out effort, evolved a plan, and struck. How fast? The first satrap governor had arrived in person only ten days before Miles and Ivan had, the last only four days before. Yenaro, the emba.s.sy"s ImpSec office had finally reported, had put his sculpture together in just two days from designs delivered from an unknown source, working his minions around the clock. Ba Lura could only have been suborned since its mistress"s death, not quite three weeks ago.

The aged haut thought nothing of taking on plans that took decades to mature, with can"t-lose security.

Witness the old empress herself. They experienced time differently than Miles did, he was fairly sure. This whole chain of events smelled... young. Or young at heart.

Miles"s opponent must be in an interesting frame of mind just now. He was a man of action and decision. But now he had to lie quiet and do nothing to draw attention to himself, even as it began to look more and more like Ba Lura"s death was not going to pa.s.s as planned as a suicide. He had to sit tight on his bank and the Great Key till the funeral was over, and glide softly back to his planetary base-because he couldn"t start the revolt from here; he"d prepared nothing in advance before he"d left home.

So would he send the Great Key on, or keep it with him? If he"d sent it back to his satrapy already, Miles was in deep trouble. Well, deeper trouble. Would the governor take the risk of losing the powerful tokens in transit? Surely not.

The droning amateur poets were getting to Miles. He found his subconscious mind not working along with the rest of it as it should, but going off on its own tangent. A poem of his own in honor of the late empress formed, unbidden, in his brain.

A Degtiar empress named Lisbet Trapped a satrap lord neatly in his net.

Enticed into treason For all the wrong reasons, He"ll soon have a crash with his kismet.

He choked down a genuinely horrible impulse to bounce down to the center of the dell and declaim his poetic offering to the a.s.sembled haut mult.i.tude, just to see what would happen.

Mia Maz glanced aside in concern at his m.u.f.fled snort. "Are you all right?"

"Yes. Sorry," he whispered. "I"m just having an attack of limericks."

Her eyes widened, and she bit her lip; only her deepening dimple betrayed her. "Shhh" she said, with feeling.

The ceremony went on uninterrupted. Alas, there was all too much time to evolve more verse, of equal artistic merit. He gazed out at the banks of white bubbles.

A beautiful lady named Rian Hypnotized a Vor scion.

The little defective Thinks he"s a detective, but instead will be fed to the lion....

How did the haut live through these things? Had they bioengineered their bladders to some inhuman capacity, along with all the other rumored changes?

Fortunately, before Miles could think of two rhymes for Vorob"yev, the first satrap governor arose to take his place on the speaker"s dais. Miles came abruptly awake.

The satrap governors" poems were all excellent, all in the most difficult forms-and, Maz informed Miles in a whisper, mostly ghost-written by the best haut-women poets in the Celestial Garden. Rank hath its privileges. But try as he might, Miles could not read any useful sinister double meanings into them-his suspect was not using this moment to publicly confess his crimes, put the wind up his enemies, or any of the other really interesting possibilities. Miles was almost surprised. The placement of Ba Lura"s body suggested Lord X had a weakness for the baroque in his plotting, when the simple would have done better. Making an Art of it?

The emperor sat through it with unruffled solemn calm. The satrap governors all received polite nods of thanks from the chief mourner for their elegant praises. Miles wondered if Benin had taken his advice, and spoken with his master yet. He hoped so.

And then, abruptly, the literary ordeal was over. Miles suppressed an impulse to applaud; that was apparently Not Done. The majordomo came out and made another cryptic gesture, at which everyone went to their knees again; the emperor and his guards decamped, followed by the consort bubbles, the satrap governors, and their ghem-officers. Then everyone else was freed-to find a bathroom, Miles trusted.

The haut race might have divested itself of the traditional meanings and functions of s.e.xuality, but they were still human enough to make the sharing of food part of life"s basic ceremonies. In their own way. Trays of meat were sculpted into flowers. Vegetables masqueraded as crustaceans, and fruit as tiny animals. Miles stared thoughtfully at the plate of simple boiled rice on the buffet table. Every grain had been individually hand-arranged in an elaborate spiral pattern. He almost tripped over his own boots, boggling at it. He controlled his bemus.e.m.e.nt and tried to refocus on the business at hand.

The informal-by Celestial Garden standards-refreshments were served in a long pavilion open as usual to the garden, presently lit in a warm afternoon glow that invited relaxation. The haut-ladies in their bubbles had evidently gone elsewhere-someplace where they could drop their bubbles to eat, presumably. This was the most exclusive of several post-poetry buffet sites scattered around the Celestial Garden. The emperor himself was somewhere at the other end of the graceful building. Miles wasn"t quite sure how Vorob"yev had got them in, but the man deserved a commendation for extraordinary service. Maz, eyes alight, hand on Vorob"yev"s arm, was clearly in some sort of sociologist"s heaven.

"Here we go," murmured Vorob"yev, and Miles went heads-up. The haut Este Rond"s party was entering the crowded pavilion. The other haut, not knowing what to do about these out-of-place outlanders, had been trying to pretend the Barrayarans were invisible ever since they"d arrived. Este Rond did not have that option. The beefy, white-robed satrap governor, his painted and uniformed ghem-general by his side, paused to greet his Barrayaran neighbors.

A white-robed woman, unusual in this heavily male gathering, trailed the Rond"s ghem- general. Her silver-blond hair was gathered in a looping queue down her back to her ankles, and she stood with downcast eyes, not speaking. She was much older than Rian, but certainly a haut-woman-G.o.d they aged well. She must be the Rond"s ghem-general"s haut-wife-any officer destined to such high planetary rank would have been expected to win one long ago.

Maz was giving Miles some inexplicable but urgent signal-a tiny head shake, and a No, no! formed silently on her lips. What was she trying to say? The haut-wife, apparently, did not speak unless spoken to-Miles had never seen anyone"s body-language express such extraordinary reserve and containment, not even the haut Rian"s.

Governor Rond and Vorob"yev exchanged elaborate courtesies, by which Miles gathered that the Rond had been their ticket in. Vorob"yev culminated his diplomatic coup by introducing Miles. "The lieutenant takes a very gratifying interest in the finer points of Cetagandan culture," Vorob"yev recommended him to the governor"s attention.

The haut Rond nodded cordially; when Vorob"yev recommended someone it seemed even Cetagandan haut-lords attended.

"I was sent to learn, as well as serve, sir. It is my duty and my pleasure." Miles favored the haut-governor with a precisely calculated bow. "And I must say, I have certainly been having learning experiences." Miles tried by his edged smile to put as much double-spin on his words as possible.

The Rond smiled back, cool-eyed. But then, if Este Rond was Lord X, he ought to be cool. They exchanged a few empty pleasantries about the diplomatic life, then Miles ventured boldly, "Would you be so kind, haut Rond, as to introduce me to Governor haut Ilsum Kety?"

A razor-thin smile twitched the Rond"s lips, and he glanced across the room at his fellow- governor and genetic superior. "Why, certainly, Lord Vorkosigan." If the Rond was going to be stuck with these outlanders, Miles gathered, he"d be happy to share the embarra.s.sment.

The Rond shepherded Miles over. Vorob"yev was left talking with the Rho Cetan ghem- general, who was taking a sincere professional interest in his potential enemies. Vorob"yev shot Miles a warning not-quite-glower, just a slight creasing of his eyebrows; Miles opened his hand, down at his side, in an I"ll-be-good promise.