Cetaganda

Weakness that can be exploited—

'— an understandable quality that puts me much in mind of our own ghem.'

Well, it was better than being compared to the hauts' other semi-siblings, the ba. Who were not the palace eunuchs they seemed, but rather some sort of incredibly valuable in-house science projects—the late Ba Lura might be better than half-sibling to Giaja himself, for all Miles knew. Sixty-eight percent shared chromosomal material, say. Quite. Miles decided he would have more respect for, not to mention caution of, the silent slippered ba after this. They were all in on this haut-business together, the putative servitors and their putative masters. No wonder the emperor had taken Lura's murder so seriously.

'As far as recognition goes, sir, this is hardly something that I will be able to show around at home. More like, hide it in the bottom of the deepest drawer I own.'

'Good,' said Fletchir Giaja in a level tone. 'As long as you lay all the matters associated with it alongside.'

Ah. That was the heart of it. A bribe for his silence. 'There is very little about the past two weeks that I shall take pleasure in remembering, sir.'

'Remember what you will, as long as you do not recount it.'

'Not publicly. But I have a duty to report.'

'Your classified military reports do not trouble me.'

'I . . .' He glanced aside at Rian's white bubble, hovering near. 'Agree.'

Giaja's pale eyelids swept down in an accepting blink. Miles felt very strange. Was it a bribe to accept a prize for doing exactly what he'd been going to do, or not do, anyway?

Come to think of it … would his own Barrayarans think he had struck some sort of bargain? The real reason he'd been detained for that unwitnessed chitchat with the Emperor last night began to glimmer up at last in his sleep-deprived brain. Surely they can't imagine Giaja could suborn me in twenty minutes of conversation. Could they?

'You will accompany me,' Giaja went on, 'on my left hand. It's time to go.' He rose, assisted by the ba, who gathered up his robes.

Miles eyed the hovering bubbles in silent desperation. His last chance . . . 'May I speak with you one more time, haut Rian?' he addressed them generally, uncertain which was the one he sought.

Giaja glanced over his shoulder, and opened his long-fingered hand in a permissive gesture, though he himself continued on at the decorous pace enforced by his costume. Two bubbles waited, one followed, and Benin stood guard just outside the open door. Not exactly a private moment. That was all right. There was very little Miles wanted to say out loud at this point anyway.

Miles glanced back and forth uncertainly at the pale glowing spheres. One blinked out, and there Rian sat, much as he had first seen her, stiff white robes cloaked by the inkfall of shining hair. She still took his breath away.

She floated closer, and raised one fine hand to touch his left cheek. It was the first time they had touched. But if she asked, Does it hurt?, he swore he'd bite her.

Rian was not a fool. 'I have taken much from you,' she spoke quietly, 'and given nothing.'

'It's the haut way, is it not?' Miles said bitterly.

'It is the only way I know.'

The prisoner's dilemma . . .

From her sleeve, she removed a dark and shining coil, rather like a bracelet. A tiny hank of silken hair, very long, wound around and around until it seemed to have no end. She thrust it at him. 'Here. It was all I could think of.'

That's because it is all you have that you truly own, milady. All else is a gift of your constellation, or the Star Creche, or the haut, or your emperor. You live in the interstices of a communal world, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, owning . . . nothing. Not even your own chromosomes.

Miles took the coil from her. It was cool and smooth in his hand. 'What does this signify? To you?'

'I … truly do not know,' she confessed.

Honest to the end. Does the woman even know how to lie? 'Then I shall keep it. Milady. For memory. Buried very deep.'

'Yes. Please.'

'How will you remember me?' He had absolutely nothing on him that he could give away right now, he realized, except for whatever lint the embassy laundry had left in the bottoms of his pockets. 'Or will it please you to forget?'

Her blue eyes glinted like sun on a glacier. 'There is no danger of that. You will see.' She move'd gently away from him. Her force-screen took form around her slowly, and she faded like perfume. The two bubbles floated after the emperor to seek their places.

The dell was similar in design to the one where the haut had held the elegiac poetry recitations, only larger, a wide sloping bowl open to the artificial sky of the dome. Haut-lady bubbles and haut– and ghem-lords in white filled its sides. The thousand or so galactic delegates in all their muted garbs crowded its circumference. In the center, ringed by a respectfully unpeopled band of grass and flowers, sat another round force dome, a dozen meters or more in diameter. Dimly through its misted surface Miles could see a jumble of objects piled high around a pallet, upon which lay the slight, white-clad figure of the haut Lisbet Degtiar. Miles squinted, trying to see if he could make out the polished maplewood box of the Barrayaran delegation's gift, but Dorca's sword was buried somewhere out of sight. It hardly mattered.

But he was going to have a ringside seat, a nearly Imperial view of it all. The final parade, down an alley cleared to the center of the bowl, was arranged in inverse order of clout; the eight planetary consorts and the Handmaiden in their nine white bubbles, seven—count 'em folks, seven—ghem-governors, then the emperor himself and his honor guard. Benin blended into ghem-General Naru's former place without a ripple. Miles limped along in Giaja's train, intensely self-conscious. He must present an astonishing sight, slight, short, sinister, his face looking like he'd lost a spaceport bar fight the night before. The Cetagandan Order of Merit made a fine show against his House blacks, quite impossible to miss.

Miles supposed Giaja was using him to send some kind of signal to his haut-governors, and not a terribly friendly one. Since Giaja clearly had no plans to let out the details of the past two weeks' events, Miles could only conclude it was one of those catch it if you can things, intended to unnerve by doubt as much as knowledge, a highly delicate species of terrorism.

Yeah. Let 'em wonder. Well, not them— he passed the Barrayaran delegation near the front of the galactic mob. Vorob'yev stared at him stunned. Maz looked surprised but pleased, pointing at Miles's throat and saying something to her fiance. Vorreedi looked wildly suspicious. Ivan looked . . . blank. Thank you for your vote of confidence, coz.

Miles himself stared for a moment when he spotted Lord Yenaro in the back row of ghem-lords. Yenaro was dressed in the purple and white garb of a Celestial Garden ghem-lord-in-waiting of the tenth rank, sixth degree, the lowest order. The lowest of the highest, Miles corrected himself. Looks like he got that assistant perfumers job after all. And so the haut Fletchir Giaja brought another loose cannon under control. Smooth.

They all took their assigned places at the center of the bowl. A procession of young ghem-girls laid a final offering of flowers all around the central force-bubble. A chorus sang. Miles found himself attempting to calculate the price in labor alone of the entire month's ceremonies if one set the time of everyone involved at some sort of minimum wage. The sum was . . . celestial. He became increasingly aware that he hadn't had breakfast, or nearly enough coffee. I will not pass out. I will not scratch my nose, or my ass. I will not—