"Stop here," Miles instructed the groundcar's driver. The car swung smoothly to the side of the street and with a sigh of its fans settled to the pavement. Miles peered at the layout of Lord Yenaro's suburban mansion in the gathering dusk, mentally pairing the visual reality with the map he had studied back at the Barrayaran embassy.
The barriers around the estate, serpentine garden walls and concealing landscaping, were visual and symbolic rather than effective. The place had never been designed as a fortress of anything but privilege. A few higher sections of the rambling house glimmered through the trees, but even they seemed to focus inward rather than outward.
"Com link check, my lords?" the driver requested. Miles and Ivan both pulled the devices from their pockets and ran through the codes with him. "Very good, my lords."
"What's our backup?" Miles asked him.
"I have three units, arranged within call."
"I trust we've included a medic."
"In the lightflyer, fully equipped. I can put him down inside Lord Yenaro's courtyard in forty-five seconds."
"That should be sufficient. I don't expect a frontal assault. But I wouldn't be surprised if I encountered another little `accident' of some sort. We'll walk from here, I think. I want to get the feel of the place."
"Yes, my lord." The driver popped the canopy for them, and Miles and Ivan exited.
"Is this what you call genteel poverty?" Ivan inquired, looking around as they strolled through open, unguarded gates and up Yenaro's curving drive.
Ah yes. The style might be different, but the scent of aristocratic decay was universal. Little signs of neglect were all around: unrepaired damage to the gates and walls, overgrown shrubbery, what appeared to be three-quarters of the mansion dark and closed-off.
"Vorob'yev had the embassy's ImpSec office make a background check of Lord Yenaro," Miles said. "Yenaro's grandfather, the failed ghem-general, left him the house but not the means to keep it up, having consumed his capital in his extended and presumably embittered old age. Yenaro's been in sole possession for about four years. He runs with an artsy crowd of young and unemployed ghem-lordlings, so his story holds up to that extent. But that thing in the Marilacan embassy's lobby was the first sculpture Yenaro's ever been known to produce. Curiously advanced, for a first try, don't you think?"
"If you're so convinced it was a trap, why are you sticking your hand in to try and trip another one?"
"No risk, no reward, Ivan."
"Just what reward are you envisioning?"
"Truth. Beauty. Who knows? Embassy security is also running a check on the workmen who actually built the sculpture. I expect it to be revealing."
At least he could make that much use of the machinery of ImpSec. Miles felt intensely conscious of the rod now riding concealed in his inner tunic pocket. He'd been carrying the Great Key in secret all day, through a tour of the city and an interminable afternoon performance of a Cetagandan classical dance company. This last treat had been arranged by Imperial decree especially for the off-planet envoys to the funeral. But the haut Rian Degtiar had not made her promised move to contact him yet. If he did not hear from his haut-lady by tomorrow . . . On one level, Miles was growing extremely sorry he had not taken the local ImpSec subordinates into his confidence on the very first day. But if he had, he would no longer be in charge of this little problem; the decisions would all have been hiked to higher levels, out of his control. The ice is thin. I don't want anyone heavier than me walking on it just yet.
A servant met them at the mansion's door as they approached, escorting them into a softly lit entry foyer where they were greeted by their host. Yenaro was in dark robes similar to the ones he'd worn at the Marilacan embassy's reception; Ivan was clearly correct in his undress greens. Miles had chosen his ultra-formal House blacks. He wasn't sure how Yenaro would interpret the message, as honor, or reminder—I'm the official envoy—or warning—don't mess with me. But he was fairly certain it was not a nuance Yenaro would miss.
Yenaro glanced down at Miles's black boots. "And are your legs better now, Lord Vorkosigan?" he inquired anxiously.
"Much better, thank you," Miles smiled tightly in return. "I shall certainly live."
"I'm so glad." The tall ghem-lord led them around a few corners and down a short flight of steps to a large semicircular room wrapped around a peninsula of the garden, as if the house were undergoing some botanical invasion. The room was somewhat randomly furnished, apparently with items Yenaro had previously owned rather than by design; but the effect was pleasantly comfortable-bachelor. The lighting here, too, was soft, camouflaging shabbiness. A dozen ghem-types were already present, talking and drinking. The men outnumbered the women; two bore full face paint, most sported the cheek-decal of the younger set, and a few radical souls wore nothing above the neck but a little eye makeup. Yenaro introduced his Barrayaran exotics all around. None of the ghem were anyone Miles had heard of or studied, though one young man claimed a great-uncle on staff at Cetagandan headquarters.
An incense burner smoked on a cylindrical stand by the garden doors. One ghem-guest paused to inhale deeply. "Good one, Yenaro," he called to his host. "Your blend?"
"Thank you, yes," said Yenaro.
"More perfumes?" inquired Ivan.
"And a bit extra. That mixture also contains a mild relaxant suitable to the occasion. You would perhaps not care for it, Lord Vorkosigan."
Miles smiled stiffly. Just how much of an organic chemist was this man? Miles was reminded that the root word of intoxication was toxic. "Probably not. But I'd love to see your laboratory."
"Would you? I'll take you up, then. Most of my friends have no interest in the technical aspects, only in the results."
A young woman, listening nearby, drifted up at this and tapped Yenaro on the arm with one long fingernail glittering with patterned enamel. "Yes, dear Yenni, results. You promised me some, remember?" She was not the prettiest ghem-woman Miles had seen, but attractive enough in swirling jade-green robes, with thick pale hair clipped back and curling down to her shoulders in a pink-frosted froth.
"And I keep my promises," Lord Yenaro asserted. "Lord Vorkosigan, perhaps you would care to accompany us upstairs now?"
"Certainly."
"I'll stay and make new acquaintances, I think." Ivan bowed himself out of the party. The two tallest and most striking ghem-women present, a leggy blonde and a truly incredible redhead, were standing together across the room; Ivan somehow managed to make eye contact with both, and they favored him with inviting smiles. Miles sent up a short silent prayer to the guardian god of fools, lovers, and madmen, and turned to follow Yenaro and his female petitioner.
Yenaro's organic chemistry laboratory was sited in another building; lights came up as they approached across the garden. It proved to be a quite respectable installation, a long double room on the second floor—some of the money that wasn't going into home repairs was obviously ending up here. Miles walked around the benches, eyeing the molecular analyzers and computers while Yenaro rummaged among an array of little bottles for the promised perfume. All the raw materials were beautifully organized in correct chemical groupings, betraying a deep understanding and detailed love of the subject on the owner's part.
"Who assists you here?" Miles inquired.
"No one," said Yenaro. "I can't bear to have anyone else mucking about. They mess up my orderings, which I sometimes use to inspire my blends. It's not all science, you know."
Indeed. With a few questions, Miles led Yenaro on to talk about how he'd made the perfume for the woman. She listened for a while and then wandered off to sniff at experimental bottles, till Yenaro, with a pained smile, rescued them from her. Yenaro's expertise was less than professorial, but fully professional; any commercial cosmetics company would have hired him on the spot for their product development laboratory. So, and so. How did this square with the man who'd claimed Hands are to be hired?
Not at all, Miles decided with concealed satisfaction. Yenaro was unquestionably an artist, but an artist of esters. Not a sculptor. Someone else had supplied the undoubted technical expertise that had produced the fountain. And had that same somebody also supplied the technical information on Miles's personal weaknesses? Let's call him . . . Lord X. Fact One about Lord X: he had access to Cetagandan Security's most detailed reports on Barrayarans of military or political significance . . . and their sons. Fact Two: he had a subtle mind. Fact Three . . . there was no fact three. Yet.
They returned to the party to find Ivan ensconced on a couch between the two women, entertaining them—or at least, they were laughing encouragingly. The ghem-women fully matched Lady Gelle in beauty; the blonde might have been her sister. The redhead was even more arresting, with a cascade of amber curls falling past her shoulders, a perfect nose, lips that one might . . . Miles cut off the thought. No ghem-lady was going to invite him to dive into her dreams.
Yenaro departed briefly to oversee his servant—he seemed to have only one—and expedite the smooth arrival of fresh food and drinks. He returned with a small transparent pitcher of a pale ruby liquid. "Lord Vorpatril." He nodded at Ivan. "I believe you appreciate your beverages. Do try this one."
Miles went to alert-status, his heart thumping. Yenaro might not be a sculptor-assassin, but he would undoubtedly make a great poisoner. Yenaro poured from the pitcher into three little cups on a lacquered tray, and extended the tray to Ivan.
"Thanks." Ivan selected one at random.
"Oh, zlati ale," murmured one of the junior ghem-lords. Yenaro passed the tray to him, taking the last cup himself. Ivan sipped and raised his brows in surprised approval. Miles watched closely to be sure Yenaro actually swallowed. He did. Five different methods for presenting deadly drinks with just that maneuver and still being sure the victim received the right one, including the trick of the host consuming the antidote first, flashed through Miles's mind. But if he was going to be that paranoid, they ought not have come here in the first place. Yet he'd eaten and drunk nothing himself so far. So what are you going to do, wait and see if Ivan falls over first, and then try it?
Yenaro did not, this time, pause to confide to the two women bracketing Ivan the repulsive biological history of his birth. Hell. Maybe the incident with the fountain really had been an accident, and the man was sorry, and trying his very best to make it up to the Barrayarans. Nevertheless, Miles circled in, trying to get a closer look at Ivan's cup over his shoulder.
Ivan was in the process of the classic I'm just resting my arm along the back of this couch test of the redhead on his right, to see if she was going to flinch from or invite further physical contact. Ivan swiveled his head to repel his cousin with a toothy smile. "Go have a good time, Miles," he murmured. "Relax. Stop breathing up my neck."
Miles grimaced back in non-appreciation of the height-humor, and drifted off again. Some people just didn't 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 com 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 com 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 driver's 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 driver's 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!"
"Not exactly . . ." she hesitated. "Some secrets are not mine to give. They belong to the Celestial Lady."
"Whom you serve."
"Yes."
"Even in death."
"Yes." A note of pride edged her voice.
"And whom the ba betrayed. Even in death."
"No! Not betrayed . . . We had a disagreement."
"An honest disagreement?"
"Yes."
"Between a thief and a murderess?"
"No!"
Quite so, but the accusation definitely had her going. Some guilt, there. Yeah, tell me about guilt. "Look, I'll make it easy for you. I'll begin. Ivan and I were coming over from the Barrayaran courier jump-ship in a personnel pod. We docked into this dump of a freight bay. The Ba Lura, wearing a station employee uniform and some badly applied false hair, lumbered into our pod as soon as the lock cycled open, and reached, we thought, for a weapon. We jumped it, and took away a nerve disruptor and this." Miles held up the Great Key. "The ba shook us off and escaped, and I stuck this in my pocket till I could find out more. The next time I saw the ba it was dead in a pool of its own blood on the floor of the funeral rotunda. I found this unnerving, to say the least. Now it's your turn. You say Ba Lura stole the key from your charge. When did you discover the Great Key was missing?"
"I found it missing from its place . . . that day."
"How long could it have been gone? When had you last checked it?"
"It is not being used every day now, because of the period of mourning for the Celestial Lady. I had last seen it when I arranged her regalia . . . two days before that."
"So potentially, it could have been missing for three days before you discovered its absence. When did the ba go missing?"
"I'm . . . not sure. I saw Ba Lura the evening before."
"That cuts it down a little. So the ba could have been gone with the key as early as the previous night. Do the ba servitors pass pretty freely in and out of the Celestial Garden, or is it hard?"
"Freely. They run all our errands."
"So Ba Lura came back . . . when?"
"The night of your arrival. But the ba would not see me. It claimed to be sick. I could have had it dragged into my presence, but . . . I did not want to inflict such an indignity."
They were in it together, right.
"I went to see the ba in the morning. The whole sorry story came out then. The ba was trying to take the Great Key to . . . someone, and entered into the wrong docking bay."
"Then someone was supposed to supply a personnel pod? Then someone was waiting on a ship in orbit?"
"I didn't say that!"
Keep pressing her. It's working. Though it did make him feel faintly guilty, to be badgering the distraught old lady so, even if possibly for her own good. Don't let up. "So the ba blundered onto our pod, and—what was the rest of its story? Tell me exactly!"
"Ba Lura was attacked by Barrayaran soldiers, who stole the Great Key."
"How many soldiers?"
"Six."
Miles's eyes widened in delight. "And then what?"
"Ba Lura begged for its life, and head and honor, but they laughed and ejected the ba, and flew away."
Lies, lies at last. And yet . . . the ba was only human. Anyone who had screwed up so hugely might re-tell the story so as to make themselves look less at fault. "What exactly did it say we said?"
Her voice grated with anger. "You insulted the Celestial Lady."
"Then what?"
"The ba came home in shame."
"So . . . why didn't the ba call on Cetagandan security to shake us down and get the Great Key back on the spot?"
There was a longer silence. Then she said, "The ba could not do that. But it confessed to me. And I came to you. To . . . humble myself. And beg for the return of my . . . charge and my honor."
"Why didn't the ba confess to you the night before?"
"I don't know!"
"So while you set about your retrieval task, Ba Lura cut its throat."
"In great grief and shame," she said lowly.
"Yeah? Why not at least wait to see if you could coax the key back from me? So why not cut its throat privately, in its own quarters? Why advertise its shame to the entire galactic community? Isn't that a bit unusual? Was the ba supposed to attend the bier-gifting ceremony?"
"Yes."
"And you were too?"
"Yes . . ."
"And you believed the ba's story?"
"Yes!"
"Lady, I think you are lost in the woods. Let me tell you what happened in the personnel pod as I saw it. There were no six soldiers. Just me, my cousin, and the pod pilot. There was no conversation, no begging or pleading, no slurs on the Celestial Lady. Ba Lura just yelped, and ran off. It didn't even fight very hard. In fact, it scarcely fought us at all. Strange, don't you think, in a hand-to-hand struggle for something so important that the ba slit its own throat over its loss the next day? We were left scratching our heads, holding the damned thing and wondering what the hell? Now you know that one of us, me or the ba, is lying. I know which one."
"Give the Great Key to me," was all she could say. "It's not yours."
"But I think I was framed. By someone who apparently wants to drag Barrayar into a Cetagandan internal . . . disagreement. Why? What am I being set up for?"
Her silence might indicate that these were the first new thoughts to penetrate her panic in two days. Or . . . it might not. In any case, she only whispered, "Not yours!"
Miles sighed. "I couldn't agree with you more, milady, and I am glad to return your charge. But in light of the whole situation, I would like to be able to testify—under fast-penta, if need be—just who I gave the Great Key back to. You could be anyone, in that bubble. My Aunt Alys, for all I know. Or Cetagandan security, or . . . who knows. I will return it to you . . . face-to-face." He held out his hand half-open, the key resting invitingly across his palm.
"Is that . . . the last of your price?"
"Yes. I'll ask no more."
It was a small triumph. He was going to see a haut-woman, and Ivan wasn't. It would doubtless embarrass the old dragon, to reveal herself to outlander eyes, but dammit, given the runaround Miles had suffered, she owed him something. And he was deathly serious about being able to identify where the Great Key went. The haut Rian Degtiar, Handmaiden of the Star Crèche, was certainly not the only player in this game.
"Very well," she whispered. The white bubble faded to transparency, and was gone from between them.
"Oh," said Miles, in a very small voice.
She sat in a float-chair, clothed from slender neck to ankle in flowing robes of shining white, a dozen shimmering textures lying one atop another. Her hair glinted ebony, masses of it that poured down across her shoulders, past her lap, to coil around her feet. When she stood, it would trail on the floor like a banner. Her enormous eyes were an ice blue of such arctic purity as to make Lady Gelle's eyes look like mud-puddles. Skin . . . Miles felt he had never seen skin before, just blotched bags people wore around themselves to keep from leaking. This perfect ivory surface . . . his hands ached with the desire to touch it, just once, and die. Her lips were warm, as if roses pulsed with blood. . . .
How old was she? Twenty? Forty? This was a haut-woman. Who could tell? Who could care? Men of the old religion had worshipped on their knees icons far less glorious, in beaten silver and hammered gold. Miles was on his knees now, and could not remember how he'd come to be there.
He knew now why they called it "falling in love." There was the same nauseating vertigo of free fall, the same vast exhilaration, the same sick certainty of broken bones upon impact with a rapidly rising reality. He inched forward, and laid the Great Key in front of her perfectly shaped, white-slippered feet, and sank back, and waited.
I am Fortune's fool.