"The proper name for the
Cetagandan imperial residence is the Celestial Garden," said
Vorob'yev, "but all the galactics just call it Xanadu.
You'll see why in a moment. Duvi, take the scenic approach."
"Yes, my lord,"
returned the young sergeant who was driving. He altered the
control program. The Barrayaran embassy aircar banked, and shot
through a shining stalagmite array of city towers.
"Gently, if you
please, Duvi. My stomach, at this hour of the morning . . ."
"Yes, my lord."
Regretfully, the driver slowed them to a saner pace. They dipped,
wove around a building that Miles estimated must have been a
kilometer high, and rose again. The horizon dropped away.
"Whoa," said Ivan.
"That's the biggest force dome I've ever seen. I didn't know
they could expand them to that size."
"It absorbs the output
of an entire generating plant," said Vorob'yev, "for
the dome alone. Another for the interior."
A flattened opalescent bubble
six kilometers across reflected the late morning sun of Eta Ceta.
It lay in the midst of the city like a vast egg in a bowl, a
pearl beyond price. It was ringed first by a kilometer wide park
with trees, then by a street reflecting silver, then by another
park, then by an ordinary street, thick with traffic. From this,
eight wide boulevards fanned out like the spokes of a wheel,
centering the city. Centering the universe, Miles gained the
impression. The effect was doubtless intended.
"The ceremony today is
in some measure a dress rehearsal for the final one in a week and
a half," Vorob'yev went on, "since absolutely everyone
will be there, ghem-lords, haut-lords, galactics and all. There
will likely be organizational delays. As long as they're not on
our part. I spent a week of hard negotiating to get you your
official rankings and place in this."
"Which is?" said
Miles.
"You two will be placed
equivalently to second-order ghem-lords." Vorob'yev
shrugged. "It was the best I could do."
In the mob, though toward the
front of it. The better to watch without being much noticed
himself, Miles supposed. Today, that seemed like a good idea. All
three of them, Vorob'yev, Ivan, and himself, were wearing their
respective House mourning uniforms, logos and decorations of rank
stitched in black silk on black cloth. Maximum formal, since they
were to be in the Imperial presence itself. Miles ordinarily
liked his Vorkosigan House uniform, whether the original brown
and silver or this somber and elegant version, because the tall
boots not only allowed but required him to dispense with the leg
braces. But getting the boots on over his swollen burns this
morning had been . . . painful. He was going to be limping more
noticeably than usual, even tanked as he was on painkillers. I'll
remember this, Yenaro.
They spiraled down to a
landing by the southern most dome entrance, fronted by a landing
lot already crowded with other vehicles. Vorob'yev dismissed the
driver and aircar.
"We keep no escort, my
lord?" Miles said doubtfully, watching it go, and awkwardly
shifting the long polished maplewood box he carried.
Vorob'yev shook his head.
"Not for security purposes. No one but the Cetagandan
emperor himself could arrange an assassination inside the
Celestial Garden, and if he wished to have you eliminated here, a
regiment of bodyguards would do you no good."
Some very tall men in the
dress uniforms of the Cetagandan Imperial Guard vetted them
through the dome locks. The guardsmen shunted them toward a
collection of float pallets set up as open cars, with white silky
upholstered seats, the color of Cetagandan Imperial mourning.
Each ambassadorial party was bowed on board by what looked to be
senior servants in white and gray. The robotically routed float
cars set off at a sedate pace a hand span above the white jade
paved walkways winding through a vast arboretum and botanical
garden. Here and there Miles saw the rooftops of scattered and
hidden pavilions peeking through the trees. All the buildings
were low and private, except for some elaborate towers poking up
in the center of the magic circle, almost three kilometers away.
Though the sun shone outside in an Eta Ceta spring day, the
weather inside the dome was set to a gray, cloudy, and
appropriately mournful dampness, promising, but doubtless not
delivering, rain.
At length they wafted to a
sprawling pavilion just to the west of the central towers, where
another servant bowed them out of the car and directed them
inside, along with a dozen other delegations. Miles stared
around, trying to identify them all.
The Marilacans, yes, there
was the silver-haired Bernaux, some green clad people who might
be Jacksonians, a delegation from Aslund which included their
chief of state. Even they had only two guards, disarmed the Betan
ambassadoress in a black-on-purple brocade jacket and matching
sarong, all streaming in to honor this one dead woman who would
never have met them face-to-face when alive. Surreal
seemed an understatement. Miles felt like he'd crossed the border
into Faerie, and when they emerged this afternoon, a hundred
years would have passed outside. The galactics had to pause at
the doorway to make way for the party of a haut-lord satrap
governor. He had an escort of a dozen ghem-guards, Miles
noted, in full formal face paint, orange, green, and white
swirls.
The decor inside was
surprisingly simple, tasteful, Miles supposed, tending heavily to
the organic, arrangements of live flowers and plants and little
fountains, as if bringing the garden indoors. The connecting
halls were hushed, not echoing, yet one's voice carried clearly.
They'd done something extraordinary with acoustics. More palace
servants circulated offering food and drinks to the guests.
A pair of pearl colored
spheres drifted at a walking pace across the far end of one hall,
and Miles blinked at his first glimpse of haut-ladies. Sort of.
Outside their very private
quarters haut-women all hid themselves behind personal force
shields, usually generated, Miles had been told, from a float
chair. The shields could be made any color, according to the mood
or whim of the wearer, but today would all be white for the
occasion. The haut-lady could see out with perfect clarity, but
no one could see in. Or reach in, or penetrate the barrier with
stunner, plasma, or nerve disruptor fire, or small projectile
weapons or minor explosions. True, the force screen also
eliminated the opportunity to fire out, but that seemed not to be
a haut-lady concern. The shield could be cut in half with a
gravitic imploder lance, Miles supposed, but the imploders' bulky
power packs, massing several hundred kilos, made them strictly
field ordinance, not hand weapons.
Inside their bubbles, the
haut-women could be wearing anything. Did they ever cheat? Slop
around in old clothes and comfy slippers when they were supposed
to be dressed up? Go nude to garden parties? Who could tell?
A tall elderly man in the
pure white robes reserved for the haut- and ghem-lords approached
the Barrayaran party. His features were austere, his skin finely
wrinkled and almost transparent. He was the Cetagandan equivalent
of an Imperial majordomo, apparently, though with a much more
flowery title, for after collecting their credentials from
Vorob'yev he provided them with exact instructions as to their
place and timing in the upcoming procession. His attitude
conveyed that outlanders might be hopelessly gauche, but if one
repeated the directions in a firm tone and made them simple
enough, there was a chance of getting through this ceremony
without disgrace.
He looked down his hawk-beak
nose at the polished box. "And this is your gift, Lord
Vorkosigan?"
Miles managed to unlatch the
box and open it for display without dropping it. Within, nestled
on a black velvet bed, lay an old, nicked sword. "This is
the gift selected from his collection by my Emperor, Gregor
Vorbarra, in honor of your late Empress. It is the sword his
Imperial ancestor Dorca Vorbarra the Just carried in the First
Cetagandan War." One of several, but no need to go into
that. "A priceless and irreplaceable historical artifact.
Here is its documentation of provenance."
"Oh," the
majordomo's feathery white brows lifted almost despite
themselves. He took the packet, sealed with Gregor's personal
mark, with more respect. "Please convey my Imperial master's
thanks to yours." He half bowed, and withdrew.
"That worked
well," said Vorob'yev with satisfaction.
"I should bloody think
so," growled Miles. "Breaks my heart." He handed
off the box to Ivan to juggle for a while.
Nothing seemed to be
happening just yet, organizational delays, Miles supposed. He
drifted away from Ivan and Vorob'yev in search of a hot drink. He
was on the point of capturing something steaming and, he hoped,
non sedating, from a passing tray when a quiet voice at his elbow
intoned, "Lord Vorkosigan?"
He turned, and stifled an
in-drawn breath. A short and rather androgynous elderly . . .
woman stood by his side, dressed in the gray and white of
Xanadu's service staff. Her head was bald as an egg, her face
devoid of hair. Not even eyebrows. "Yes . . . ma'am?"
"Ba," she said in
the tone of one offering a polite correction. "A lady wishes
to speak with you. Would you accompany me, please?"
"Uh . . . sure."
She turned and paced soundlessly away, and he followed in alert
anticipation. A lady? With luck, it might be Mia Maz of the
Vervani delegation, who ought to be around somewhere in this mob
of a thousand people. He was developing some urgent questions for
her. No eyebrows? I was expecting a contact sometime, but . .
. here?
They exited the hall. Passing
out of sight of Vorob'yev and Ivan stretched Miles's nerves still
further. He followed the gliding servant down a couple of
corridors, and across a little open garden thick with moss and
tiny flowers misted with dew. The noises from the reception hall
still carried faintly through the damp air. They entered a small
building, open to the garden on two sides and floored with dark
wood that made his black boots echo unevenly in time with his
limping stride. In a dim recess of the pavilion, a woman sized
pearlescent sphere floated a few centimeters above the polished
floor, which reflected an inverted halo from its light.
"Leave us," a voice
from the sphere directed the servant, who bowed and withdrew,
eyes downcast. The transmission through the force screen gave the
voice a low, flat timbre.
The silence lengthened. Maybe
she'd never seen a physically imperfect man before. Miles bowed,
and waited, trying to look cool and suave, and not stunned and
wildly curious.
"So, Lord
Vorkosigan," came the voice again at last. "Here I
am."
"Er . . . quite."
Miles hesitated. "And just who are you, milady, besides a
very pretty soap-bubble?"
There was a longer pause,
then, "I am the haut Rian Degtiar. Servant of the Celestial
Lady, and Handmaiden of the Star Crêche."
Another flowery haut-title
that gave no clue to its function. He could name every ghem-lord
on the Cetagandan General Staff, all the satrap governors and
their ghem-officers, but this female haut-babble was new to him.
But the Celestial Lady was the polite name for the late Empress
haut Lisbet Degtiar, and that name at least he knew
"You are a relative of
the late Dowager Empress, milady?"
"I am of her genomic
constellation, yes. Three generations removed. I have served her
half my life."
A lady-in-waiting, all right.
One of the old Empress's personal retinue, then, the most inward
of insiders. Very high rank, probably very aged as well.
"Uh . . . you're not related to a ghem-lord named Yenaro, by
chance, are you?"
"Who?" Even through
the force screen the voice conveyed utter bafflement.
"Never mind. Clearly not
important." His legs were beginning to throb. Getting the
damn boots back off when he returned to the embassy was going to
be an even better trick than getting them on had been. "I
could not help noticing your serving woman. Are there many folk
around here with no hair?"
"It is not a woman. It
is Ba."
"Ba?"
"The neuter ones, the
Emperor's high slaves. In his Celestial Father's time it was the
fashion to make them smooth like that."
Ah. Genetically engineered,
genderless servants. He'd heard rumors about them, mostly
connected, illogically enough, with sexual scenarios that had
more to do with the teller's hopeful fantasies than with any
likely reality. But they were reputed to be a race utterly loyal
to the lord who had, after all, literally created them. "So
. . . not all ba are hairless, but all the hairless ones are
ba?" he worked it out.
"Yes . . ." More
silence, then, "Why have you come to the Celestial Garden,
Lord Vorkosigan?"
His brow wrinkled. "To
hold up Barrayar's honor in this circuum, solemn procession, and
to present your late Empress's bier gift. I'm an envoy. By
appointment of Emperor Gregor Vorbarra, whom I serve. In
my own small way."
Another, longer pause.
"You mock me in my misery."
"What? "
"What do you want,
Lord Vorkosigan?"
"What do I want?
You called me here, Lady, isn't it the other way around?" He
rubbed his neck, tried again. "Er . . . can I help you, by
chance?"
"You?!"
Her astonished tone stung
him. "Yeah, me! I'm not as . . ." incompetent as I
look. "I've been known to accomplish a thing or two, in
my time. But if you won't give me a clue as to what this is all
about, I can't. I will if I do know but I can't if I don't. Don't
you see?" Now he had confused himself, tongue tangled.
"Look, can we start this conversation over?" He bowed
low. "Good day, I am Lord Miles Vorkosigan of Barrayar. How
may I assist you, milady?"
"Thief!"
The light dawned at last.
"Oh. Oh, no. I am a Vorkosigan, and no thief, milady.
Though as possibly a recipient of stolen property, I may be a
fence," he allowed judiciously.
More baffled silence; perhaps
she was not familiar with criminal jargon. Miles went on a little
desperately, "Have you, uh, by chance lost an object? Rod
shaped electronic device with a bird crest seal on the cap?"
"You have it!" Her
voice was a wail of dismay.
"Well, not on
me."
Her voice went low, throaty,
desperate. "You still have it. You must return it to
me."
"Gladly, if you can
prove it belongs to you. I certainly don't pretend it belongs to
me," he added pointedly.
"You would do this . . .
for nothing?"
"For the honor of my
name, and, er . . . I am ImpSec. I'd do almost anything
for information. Satisfy my curiosity, and the deed is
done."
Her voice came back in a
shocked whisper, "You mean you don't even know what it is
?"
The silence stretched for so
long after that, he was beginning to be afraid the old lady had
fainted dead away in there. Processional music wafted faintly
through the air from the great pavilion.
"Oh, shier, oh. That
damn parade is starting, and I'm supposed to be near the front.
Milady, how can I reach you?"
"You can't." Her
voice was suddenly breathless. "I have to go too. I'll send
for you." The white bubble rose, and began to float away.
"Where? When?" The
music was building toward the start cue.
"Say nothing of
this!"
He managed a sketchy bow at
her retreating maybe back, and began hobbling hastily across the
garden. He had a horrible feeling he was about to be very
publicly late.
When he'd wended his way back
into the reception area, he found the scene was every bit as bad
as he'd feared. A line of people was advancing to the main exit,
toward the tower buildings, and Vorob'yev in the Barrayaran
delegation's place was dragging his feet, creating an obvious
gap, and staring around urgently. He spotted Miles and mouthed
silently, Hurry up, dammit! Miles hobbled faster, feeling
as if every eye in the room was on him.
Ivan, with an exasperated
look on his face, handed over the box to him as he arrived.
"Where the hell were you all this time, in the lav? I looked
there"
"Sh. Tell you later.
I've just had the most bizarre . . ." Miles struggled with
the heavy maplewood box, and straightened it around into an
appropriate presentational position. He marched forward across a
courtyard paved with more carved jade, catching up at last with
the delegation in front of them just as they reached the door to
one of the high towered buildings. They all filed into an echoing
rotunda. Miles spied a few white bubbles in the line ahead, but
there was no telling if one was his old haut-lady. The game plan
called for everyone to slowly circle the bier, genuflect, and lay
their gifts in a spiral pattern in order of
seniority/status/clout, and file out the opposite doors to the
Northern Pavilion (for the haut-lords and ghem-lords), or the
Eastern Pavilion (for the galactic ambassadors) where a funereal
luncheon would be served.
But the steady procession
stopped, and began to pile up in the wide arched doorways. From
the rotunda ahead, instead of quiet music and hushed, shuffling
footsteps, a startled babble poured. Voices were raised in sharp
astonishment, then other voices in even sharper command.
"What's gone
wrong?" Ivan wondered, craning his neck. "Did somebody
faint or something?"
Since Miles's eye level view
was of the shoulders of the man ahead of him, he could scarcely
answer this. With a lurch, the line began to proceed again. It
reached the rotunda, but then was shunted out a door immediately
to the left. A ghem-commander stood at the intersection,
directing traffic with low voiced instructions, repeated over and
over, "Please retain your gifts and proceed directly around
the outside walkway to the Eastern Pavilion, please retain your
gifts and proceed directly to the Eastern Pavilion, all will be
reordered presently, please retain"
At the center of the rotunda,
above everyone's heads on a great catafalque, lay the Dowager
Empress in state. Even in death outlander eyes were not invited
to look upon her. Her bier was surrounded by a force bubble, made
translucent; only a shadow of her form was visible through it, as
if through gauze, a white-clad, slight, sleeping ghost. A line of
mixed ghem-guards apparently just drafted from the passing satrap
governors stood in a row from catafalque to wall on either side
of the bier, shielding something else from the passing eyes.
Miles couldn't stand it. After
all, they can't massacre me here in front of everybody, can they?
He jammed the maplewood box at Ivan, and ducked under the elbow
of the ghem-officer trying to shoo everyone out the other door.
Smiling pleasantly, his hands held open and empty, he slipped
between two startled ghem-guards, who were clearly not expecting
such a rude and impudent move.
On the other side of the
catafalque, in the position reserved for the first gift of the
haut-lord of highest status, lay a dead body. Its throat was cut,
and quantities of fresh red blood pooled on the shimmering green
malachite floor all around, soaking into its gray and white
palace servitor's uniform. A thin jeweled knife was clutched
rigorously in its outflung right hand. It was exactly the
term for the corpse, too. A bald, eyebrowless, man shaped
creature, elderly but not frail . . . Miles recognized their
intruder from the personnel pod even without the false hair. His
own heart seemed to stop in astonishment.
Somebody's just raised the
stakes in this little game.
The highest ranking
ghem-officer in the room swooped down upon him. Even through the
swirl of face paint his smile was fixed, the look of a man
constrained to be polite to someone he would more naturally have
preferred to bludgeon to the pavement. "Lord Vorkosigan,
would you rejoin your delegation, please?"
"Of course. Who was that
poor fellow?"
The ghem-commander made
little herding motions at him. The Cetagandan was not fool enough
to actually touch him, of course, and Miles allowed himself to be
moved off. Grateful, irate, and flustered, the man was actually
surprised into an unguarded reply. "It is Ba Lura, the
Celestial Lady's most senior servitor. The Ba has served her for
sixty years and more. It seems to have wished to follow on and
serve her in death as well. A most tasteless gesture, to do it here
. . ." The ghem-commander buffeted Miles near enough to the
again stopped line of delegates for Ivan's long arm to reach out,
grab him, and pull him in, and march him doorward with a firm
fist in the middle of his back.
"What the hell is going on
?" Ivan bent his head to hiss in Miles's ear from behind.
And where were you when
the murder took place, Lord Vorkosigan? Except that it didn't
look like a murder, it really did look like a suicide. Done in a
most archaic manner. Less than thirty minutes ago. While he had
been off talking with the mysterious white bubble, who might or
might not have been haut Rian Degtiar, how the hell was he to
tell? The corridor seemed to be spinning, but Miles supposed it
was only his brain.
"You should not have
gotten out of line, my lord," said Vorob'yev severely.
"Ah . . . what was it you saw?"
Miles's lip curled, but he
tamped it back down. "One of the late Dowager Empress's
oldest ba servants has just cut its throat at the foot of her
bier. I didn't know the Cetagandans made a fashion of human
sacrifice. Not officially, anyway."
Vorob'yev's lips pursed in a
soundless whistle, then flashed a brief, instantly stifled grin.
"How awkward for them," he purred. "They
are going to have an interesting scramble, trying to retrieve this
ceremony."
Yes. So if the creature
was so loyal, why did it arrange what it must have known would be
a major embarrassment for its masters? Posthumous revenge?
Admittedly, with Cetagandans that's the safest kind . . . .
By the time they completed an
interminable hike around the outside of the central towers to the
pavilion on the eastern side, Miles's legs were killing him. In a
huge hall, the several hundred galactic delegates were being
seated at tables by an army of servitors, all moving just a
little faster than strict dignity would have preferred. Since
some of the bier gifts the other delegates carried were even
bulkier than the Barrayarans' maplewood box, the seating was
going slowly and more awkwardly than planned, with a lot of
people jumping up and down and rearranging themselves, to the
servitors' evident dismay. Somewhere deep in the bowels of the
building Miles pictured a squadron of harried Cetagandan cooks
swearing many colorful and obscene Cetagandan oaths.
Miles spotted the Vervani
delegation being seated about a third of the way across the room.
He took advantage of the confusion to slip out of his assigned
chair, weave around several tables, and try to seize a word with
Mia Maz.
He stood by her elbow, and
smiled tensely. "Good afternoon, m'lady Maz. I have to
talk"
"Lord Vorkosigan! I
tried to talk with you" they cut across each other's
greetings.
"You first," he
ducked his head at her.
"I tried to call you at
your embassy earlier, but you'd already left. What in the world
happened in the rotunda, do you have any idea? For the
Cetagandans to alter a ceremony of this magnitude in the
middle--it's unheard of."
"They didn't exactly
have a choice. Well, I suppose they could have ignored the body
and just carried on around it. I think that would have
been much more impressive, personally, but evidently they decided
to clean it up first." Again Miles repeated what he was
beginning to think of as "the official version" of Ba
Lura's suicide. He had the total attention of everyone within
earshot. To hell with it, the rumors would be flying soon enough
no matter what he said or didn't say.
"Did you have any luck
with that little research question I posed to you last
night?" Miles continued. "I, uh . . . don't think this
is the time or place to discuss it, but . . ."
"Yes, and yes," Maz
said.
And not over any holovid
transmission channel on this planet, either, Miles thought, supposedly
secured or not. "Can you stop by the Barrayaran Embassy,
directly after this? We'll . . . take tea, or something."
"I think that would be
very appropriate," Maz said. She watched him with newly
intensified curiosity in her dark eyes.
"I need a lesson in
etiquette," Miles added, for the benefit of their interested
nearby listeners.
Maz's eyes twinkled in
something that might have been suppressed amusement. "So I
have heard it said, my lord," she murmured.
"By" whom?
he choked off. Vorob'yev, I fear. "'Bye," he
finished instead, rapped the table cheerily, and retreated back
to his proper place. Vorob'yev watched Miles seat himself with a
slightly dangerous look in his eyes that suggested he was
thinking of putting a leash on the peripatetic young envoy soon,
but he made no comment aloud.
By the time they had eaten
their way through about twenty courses of tiny delicacies, which
more than made up in numbers what they lacked in volume, the
Cetagandans had reorganized themselves. The haut-lord majordomo
was apparently one of those commanders who was never more
masterly than when in retreat, for he managed to get everyone
marshaled in the correct order of seniority again even though the
line was now being cycled through the rotunda in reverse. One
sensed the majordomo would be cutting his throat later, in
the proper place and with the proper ceremony, and not in this
dreadful harum-scarum fashion.
Miles laid down the maplewood
box on the malachite floor in the second turning of the growing
spiral of gifts, about a meter from where Ba Lura had poured out
its life. The unmarked, perfectly polished floor wasn't even
damp. And had the Cetagandan security people had time to do a
forensics scan before the cleanup? Or had someone been counting
on the hasty destruction of the subtler evidence? Damn, I wish
I could have been in charge of this, just now.
The white float cars were
waiting on the other side of the Eastern Pavilion, to carry the
emissaries back to the gates of the Celestial Garden. The entire
ceremony had run only about an hour late, but Miles's sense of
time was inverted from his first whimsical vision of Xanadu as
Faerie. He felt as if a hundred years had gone by inside the
dome, while only a morning had passed in the outside world. He
winced painfully in the bright afternoon light, as Vorob'yev's
sergeant-driver brought the embassy aircar to their pickup point.
Miles fell gratefully into his seat.
I think they're going to
have to cut these bloody boots off, when we get back home.