'Let me make sure first he'll be willing to do what we need, and can make the time available,' Miles answered cautiously. 'You and Nikki will go in together, of course.'

'I understand, but . . . I was thinking, Nikki tends to withdraw around strangers. Make sure this fellow grasps that just because Nikki goes monosyllabic doesn't mean he's not desperately curious.'

'I'll make sure he understands.'

'Does he have much experience with children?'

'Not as far as I know.' Miles gave her a rueful smile. 'But perhaps he'll be grateful for the practice.'

'Under the circumstances, I find that unlikely.'

'Under the circumstances, I'm afraid you're right. But I trust his judgment.'

The myriad other questions which lay between them had to wait, as Nikki came bouncing back with the news that all newborn kittens' eyes were blue. The near-hysteria which had crumpled his face when they'd first arrived was erased. This kitchen made a fair barometer of his internal state; pleasantly distracted by food and pets, he was clearly much calmer. That he now could be so diverted was telling, Ekaterin judged. I was right to come to Miles. How did Illyan know?

Ekaterin let Nikki burble on till he ran down, then said, 'We should go. My aunt will be wondering what happened to us.' The hasty note she'd penned had told where they'd gone, but not why; Ekaterin had been far too upset at the time to even try to include the details. She looked forward without pleasure to explaining this whole hideous mess to her uncle and aunt, but at least they knew the truth, and could be counted upon to share her outrage.

'Pym can drive you,' Miles offered immediately.

He made no attempt to trap her here this time, she noted with dark amusement. Not a slow learner, indeed?

Promising to call her when he'd cleared Nikki's interview, Miles handed them personally into the rear compartment of the groundcar, and watched them out the gates. Nikki was quiet on this trip, too, but the silence was much less fraught now.

After a little, he gave her an odd, appraising look. 'Mama . . . did you turn Lord Vorkosigan down 'cause he's a mutie?'

'No,' she replied at once, and firmly. His brows bent. If he didn't get a more explicit answer, he would likely make up his own, she realized with an inward sigh. 'You see, when he hired me to make his garden, it wasn't because he wanted a garden, or thought I was good at the work. He just thought it would give him a chance to see me a lot.'

'Well,' said Nikki, 'that makes sense. I mean, it did, didn't it?'

She managed not to glower at him. Her work meant nothing to him —what did? If you could say anything to anyone . . . 'Would you like it, if somebody promised to help you become a jump pilot, and you worked your heart out studying, and then it turned out they were tricking you into doing something else?'

'Oh.' The light glimmered, dimly.

'I was angry because he'd tried to manipulate me, and my situation, in a way I found invasive and offensive.' After a short, reflective pause, she added helplessly, 'It seems to be hisstyle .' Was it a style she could learn to live with? Or was it a style he could bloody well learn not to try on her? Live, or learn? Can we have some of both?

'So . . . d'you like him? Or not?'

Like was surely not an adequate word for this hash of delight and anger and longing, this profound respect laced with profound irritation, all floating on a dark pool of old pain. The past and the future, at war in her head. 'I don't know. Some of the time I do, yes, very much.'

Another long pause. 'Are you in love with him?'

What Nikki knew of adult love, he'd mostly garnered off the holovid. Part of her mind readily translated this question as code for, Which way are you going to jump, and what will happen to me? And yet . . . he could not share or even imagine the complexity of her romantic hopes and fears, but he certainly knew how such stories were supposed to Come Out Right.

'I don't know. Some of the time. I think.'

He favored her with his Big People Are Crazy look. In all, she could only agree.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Miles had obtained copies of archives from the Council of Counts covering all the contested succession debates from the last two centuries. Together with a stack of gleanings from Vorkosigan House's own document room, they spread themselves over two tables and a desk in the library. He was deeply engrossed in a hundred-and-fifty-year-old account of the fourth Count Vorlakial's family tragedy when Armsman Jankowski appeared at the door from the anteroom and announced, 'Commodore Galeni, m'lord.'

Miles looked up in surprise. 'Thank you, Jankowski.' The Armsman gave him an acknowledging nod, and withdrew, closing the double doors discreetly behind himself.

Galeni trod across the great library, and regarded the scattering of papers, parchments, and flimsies with an ex-historian's alert eye. 'Cramming, are you?' he inquired.

'Yes. Now, you had that doctorate in Barrayaran history. Do any really interesting District succession squabbles spring to your memory?'

'Lord Midnight the horse,' Galeni replied at once. 'Who always voted `neigh.' '

'Got that one already.' Miles waved at the pile on the far end of the inlaid table. 'What brings you here, Duv?'

'Official ImpSec business. Your requested analyst's report, My Lord Auditor, regarding certain rumors about Madame Vorsoisson's late husband.'

Miles scowled, reminded. 'ImpSec is late off the mark. This would have done a lot more good yesterday. Not a hell of a lot of point to order me to back off, and then let Ekaterin and Nikki be subjected to that surprise harassment—in her own home, good God—by that idiot Vormoncrief.'

'Yes. Illyan told Allegre. Allegre told me. I wish I had someone to tell . . . I was still pulling in informants' reports and cross-checks as of midnight last night, thank you very much, my lord. I wasn't able to calculate anything like a decent reliability score till late yesterday.'

'Oh. Oh, no, Allegre didn't put you on this . . . slander matter personally, did he? Sit, sit.' Miles waved Galeni to a chair, which the Komarran pulled up around the corner of the table from Miles.

'Of course he did. I was an eyewitness to your ghastly dinner party, which seems to have launched the whole thing, and more to the point, I'm already in the need-to-know pool regarding the Komarr case.' Galeni seated himself with a tired grunt; his eye automatically began to scan the documents sideways. 'There was no way Allegre would add another man to that pool if he could possibly avoid it.'

'Mm, makes sense, I guess. But I'd hardly think you'd have

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