Cetaganda

want to be saved. He decided instead to try to talk with some of Yenaro's male friends, several of whom were clustered at the opposite end of the room.

It wasn't hard to get them to talk about themselves. It seemed that was all they had to talk about. Forty minutes of valiant effort in the art of conversation convinced Miles that most of Yenaro's friends had the minds of fleas. The only expertise they displayed was in witty commentary upon the personal lives of their equally idle compatriots: their clothes, various love affairs and the mismanagement thereof, sports—all spectator, none participatory, and mainly of interest due to wagers on the outcome—and the assorted latest commercial feelie dreams and other offerings, including erotic ones. This retreat from reality seemed to absorb by far the bulk of the ghem-lordlings' time and attention. Not one of them offered a word about anything of political or military interest. Hell, Ivan had more mental clout.

It was all a bit depressing. Yenaro's friends were excluded men, wasted wastrels. No one was excited about a career or service—they had none. Even the arts received only a ripple of interest. They were strictly feelie dream consumers, not producers. All in all, it was probably a good thing these youths had no political interests. They were just the sort of people who started revolutions but could not finish them, their idealism betrayed by their incompetence. Miles had met similar young men among the Vor, third or fourth sons who for whatever reason had not gained entry to a traditional military career, living as pensioners upon their families, but even they could look forward to some change in their status by mid-life. Given the average ghem life span, any chance of ascent up the social ladder by inheritance was still some eighty or ninety years off for most of Yenaro's set. They weren't inherently stupid—their genetics did not permit it—but their minds were damped down to some artificial horizon. Beneath the air of hectic sophistication, their lives were frozen in place. Miles almost shivered.

Miles decided to try out the women, if Ivan had left any for him. He excused himself from the group to pursue a drink—he might have left without explanation just as easily, for all anyone seemed to care about Lord Yenaro's most unusual, and shortest, guest. Miles helped himself at a bowl from which everyone else seemed to be ladling their drinks, and touched the cup to his lips, but did not swallow. He looked up to find himself under the gaze of a slightly older woman who had come late to the party with a couple of friends, and who had been lingering quietly on the fringes of the gathering. She smiled at him.

Miles smiled back, and slid around the table to her side, composing a suitable opening line. She took the initiative from him.

'Lord Vorkosigan. Would you care to take a walk in the garden with me?'

'Why . . . certainly. Is Lord Yenaro's garden a sight to see?' In the dark?

'I think it will interest you.' The smile dropped from her face as if wiped away with a cloth the moment she turned her back to the room, to be replaced with a look of grim determination. Miles fingered the comm link in his trouser pocket, and followed in the perfumed wake of her robes. Once out of sight of the room's glass doors among the neglected shrubbery, her step quickened. She said nothing more. Miles limped after her. He was unsurprised when they came to a red-enameled, square-linteled gate and found a person waiting, a slight, androgynous shape with a dark hooded robe protecting its bald head from the night's gathering dew.

'The ba will escort you the rest of the way,' said the woman.

'The rest of the way where?'

'A short walk,' the ba spoke in a soft alto.

'Very well.' Miles held up a restraining hand, and drew his comm link from his pocket, and said into it, 'Base. I'm leaving Yenaro's premises for a while. Track me, but don't interrupt me unless I call for you.'

The drivers voice came back in a dubious tone. 'Yes, my lord . . . where are you going?'

'I'm . . . taking a walk with a lady. Wish me luck.'

'Oh.' The drivers tone grew more amused, less dubious. 'Good luck, my lord.'

'Thank you.' Miles closed the channel. 'All right.'

The woman seated herself on a rickety bench and drew her robes around herself with the air of one preparing for a lengthy wait. Miles followed the ba out the gate and past another residence, across a roadway, and into a shallow wooded ravine. The ba produced a hand-light to prevent stumbles on rocks and roots, politely playing it before Miles's polished boots, which were going to be a lot less polished if this went on very far … they climbed up out of the ravine into what was obviously the back portion of another suburban estate in an even more neglected condition than Yenaro's.

A dark bulk looming through the trees was an apparently deserted house. But they turned right on an overgrown path, the ba pausing to sweep damp branches out of Miles's way, and then back down toward the stream. They emerged in a wide clearing where a wooden pavilion stood—some ghem-lord's former favorite picnic spot for al fresco brunches, no doubt. Duckweed choked a pond, crowding out a few sad water-irises. They crossed the pond on an arched footbridge, which creaked so alarmingly Miles was momentarily glad he was no bigger. A faint, familiar pearlescent glow emanated from the pavilion's vine-veiled openings. Miles touched the Great Key hidden in his tunic, for reassurance. Right. This is it.

The ba servitor pulled aside some greenery, gestured Miles inside, and went to stand guard by the footbridge. Cautiously, Miles stepped within the small, one-roomed building.

The haut Rian Degtiar or a close facsimile sat, or stood, or something, the usual few centimeters above the floor, a blank pale sphere. She had to be riding in a float-chair. Her light seemed dimmed, stopped down to a furtive feeble glow. Wait. Let her make the first move. The moment stretched. Miles began to be afraid this conversation was going to be as disjointed as their first one, but then she spoke, in the same breathless, transmission-flattened voice he had heard before. 'Lord Vorkosigan. I have contacted you as I said I would, to make arrangements for the safe return of my . . . thing.'

'The Great Key,' said Miles.

'You know what it is now?'

'I've been doing a little research, since our first chat.'

She moaned. 'What do you want of me? Money? I have none. Military secrets? I know none.'

'Don't go coy on me, and don't panic. I want very little.' Miles unfastened his tunic, and drew out the Great Key.

'Oh, you have it here! Oh, give it to me!' The pearl bobbed forward.

Miles stepped back. 'Not so fast. I've kept it safe, and I'll give it back. But I feel I should get something in return. I merely want to know exactly how it came to be delivered, or mis-delivered, into my hands, and why.'

'It's no business of yours, Barrayaran!'

'Perhaps not. But every instinct I own is crying out that this is some kind of setup, of me, or of Barrayar through me, and as a Barrayaran ImpSec officer that makes it very explicitly my business. I'm willing to tell you everything I saw and heard, but you must return the favor. To start with, I want to know what Ba Lura was doing with a piece of the late Empress's major regalia on a space station.'

Her voice went low and tart. 'Stealing it. Now give it back.'

'A key. A key is not of great worth without a lock. I grant it's a pretty elegant historical artifact, but if Ba Lura was planning on a privately funded retirement, surely there are more valuable things to steal from the Celestial Garden. And ones less certain to be missed. Was Lura planning to blackmail you? Is that why you murdered it?' A completely absurd charge—the haut-lady and Miles were each other's alibis—but he was curious to see what it would stir up in the way of response.

The reaction was instantaneous. 'You vile little—! I did not drive Lura to its death. If anything, you are responsible!'

God, I hope not. 'This may be so, and if it is, I must know. Lady—there is no Cetagandan security within ten kilometers of us right now, or you could have them strip this bauble off me and dump my carcass in the nearest alleyway right now. Why not? Why did Ba Lura steal the Great Key—for its pleasure? The Ba makes a hobby of collecting Cetagandan Imperial regalia, does it?'

'You are horrible!'

'Then to whom was Ba Lura taking the thing to sell?'

'Not sell!'

'Ha! Then you know who!'