Komarr

gestures. This made, what, the fourth time around for that ploy? His trump card, which had always before ended the game in his favor.

He brandished the skellytum high. 'Me, or it?' He watched her face, waiting for her to break. An almost clinical curiosity prompted her to say You, just to see how he would wriggle out of his challenge, but she kept silent still. When she did not speak, he hesitated in confusion for a moment, then launched the ancient absurd thing over the side.

Five floors up. She counted the seconds in her head, waiting for the crash from below. It came as more of a distant, sodden thump, mixed with the crack of exploding pottery.

'You ass, Tien. You didn't even look to see if there was anyone below.'

With a look of sudden alarm that almost made her want to laugh, he peeked fearfully over the side. Apparently he hadn't managed to kill anyone after all, for he inhaled deeply and turned back toward her, taking a few steps through the open airseal door into the kitchen, but not too near to her. 'React, damn you! What do I have to do to get through to you?'

'Don't bother,' she said levelly. 'I cannot imagine anything you could do that would make me more angry than I am.'

He had come to the end of his menu of tactics and stood a loss. His voice grew smaller. 'What do you want?'

'I want my honor back. But you cannot give it to me.'

His voice grew smaller still; his hands opened in pleading. 'I'm sorry about your aunt's skellytum. I don't know at …'

'Are you sorry about grand theft and petty treason, bribery and peculation?'

'I did it for you, Kat!'

'In eleven years,' she said slowly, 'you have apparently never figured out who I am. I don't understand that. How you can live with someone so intimately, so long, and yet never know them. Maybe you were living with some Kat holovid projection from your own mind, I don't know.'

'What do you want, dammit? It's not like I can go back. I can't confess. That would be public dishonor! For me, you, Nikki, your uncle—you can't want that!'

'I want never to have to tell a lie again for as long as I live. What you do is your problem.' She took a deep breath. 'But know this. Whatever you do, or don't do, from now on had better be for yourself. Because it won't touch .' Done once, done for all time. She was never going through this again.

'I can—I can fix it.'

Was he referring to her skellytum, their marriage, his crime? Wrong anyway, in all cases.

When she still did not respond, he blurted desperately, 'Nikolai is mine, by Barrayaran law.'

Interesting. Nikki was the one tactic he had never employed before, off limits. She knew then how deathly serious he knew her to be. Good. He glanced around, and added belatedly, here is Nikki?'

'Someplace safer.'

'You can't keep him from me!'

I can if you're in prison. She didn't bother saying it aloud. Under the circumstances, Tien was perhaps unlikely to challenge her possession of Nikki before the law. But she wanted to keep Nikolai's concerns as far separated as possible from the ugliest part of this thing. She would not start that war, but if Tien dared to do so, she would finish it. She watched him more coldly than ever.

'I will fix it. I can. I have a plan. I've been thinking about all day.'

Tien with a plan was about as reassuring as a two-year-old with a charged plasma arc. No. You are not to take responsibility for him anymore. That's what this is all about, remember? Let go. 'Do whatever you wish, Tien. I'm going to go finish packing now.'

'Wait—' He swung around her. It disturbed her to have him between her and the door, but she did not let her fear show. 'Wait. I'll make it up. You'll see. I'll fix it. Wait here!'

With an anxious wave of his hands, he made for the hall door, and was gone.

She listened to his retreating footsteps. Only when she heard the faint whisper from the lift tube did she step back onto the balcony and look over. Far below, the shattered remains of her skellytum made an irregular wet blotch on the pavement, the broken scarlet tendrils looking like spattered blood. A passer-by was staring curiously at it. After a minute, she saw Tien emerge from the building and stride across the park toward the bubble-car platform, almost breaking into a run from time to time. He twice looked back up toward their balcony, over his shoulder; she stepped back into the shadows. He disappeared into the station.

Every muscle of her body seemed to be spasming with tension. She felt close to vomiting. She returned to her—to the kitchen, and drank a glass of water, which helped settle her breathing and her stomach. She went to her work room to fetch a basket and some plastic sheeting and a trowel, to go scrape the mess off the walkway five floors down.

CHAPTER TEN

Miles sat at Administrator Vorsoisson's comconsole desk, methodically reading through the files of all the employees of the Waste Heat department. There seemed to be a lot of personnel, compared to some of the other departments; Waste Heat was definitely a favored child in the Project budget. Presumably most of them spent the bulk of their time out at the experiment station, since Waste Heat's offices here were modest. In hindsight, always acute, Miles wished he'd begun his survey of Radovas's life out there today, where there might have been some action to observe, instead of in this tower of bureaucratic boredom. More, he wished he'd dropped in on the experiment station during their first tour . . . well, no. He would not have known what to look for then.

And you know now? He shook his head in wry dismay and brought up another file. Tuomonen had taken a copy of the personnel list, and in due time would be interviewing most of these people, unless something happened to take the investigation off in another direction. Such as finding Marie Trogir—that was the first item now on Miles's wish list for ImpSec. Miles shifted to ease the twinge in his back; he could feel his body stiffening from sitting still in a cool room too long. Didn't these Serifosans know they needed to waste more heat?

Quick steps in the hallway paused and turned in at the outer office, and Miles glanced up. Tien Vorsoisson, a little out of breath, hung a moment in his office doorway, then plunged inside. He was carrying two heavy jackets, his own and the one of his wife's that Miles had used the other day, and a breath mask labeled Visitor, Medium. He smiled at Miles in suppressed agitation. 'My Lord Auditor. So glad to still find you here.'

Miles shut down the file and regarded Vorsoisson with interest. 'Hello, Administrator. What brings you back tonight?'

'You, my lord. I need to talk with you right away. I have to … to show you something I've discovered.'

Miles opened his hand, indicating the comconsole, but Vorsoisson shook his head. 'Not here, my lord. Out at the Waste Heat experiment station.'

Ah ha. 'Right now?'

'Yes, tonight, while everyone is gone.' Vorsoisson laid the spare breath mask on the comconsole, rummaged in a cabinet in the far wall, and came up with his own personal mask. He yanked the straps over his neck and hastily adjusted his chest harness to hold the supplementary oxygen bottle in place. 'I've requisitioned a lightflyer, it's waiting downstairs.'

'All right …' Now what was this going to be all about? Too much to hope Vorsoisson had found Marie Trogir locked in a closet out there. Miles checked his own mask—power and oxygen levels indicated it was fully