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Well, he certainly had the undivided attention of everyone in the loading bay,
murderess, victim, haut-cops and all. What next, handsprings? "It's been like
this since we were little kids, y'know? Whenever the two of us were together,
they'd always talk to him first, like I was some kind of idiot alien who
needed an interpreter-" the haut Pel reappeared silently in the doorway,
lifted her hand-Miles's voice rose to a shout, "Well, I'm sick of it, d'you
hear?!"
The haut Vio's head twisted in realization just as the haut Pel's stunner
buzzed. Vio's hand spasmed on the knife as the stunner beam struck her. Miles
pelted forward as a line of red appeared at the blade's edge, and he grabbed
for Ivan as she slumped unconscious. The stun nimbus had caught Ivan too, and
his eyes rolled back. Miles let the haut Vio hit the floor on her own, as hard
as gravity took her. Ivan he lowered gently.
It was only a surface cut. Miles breathed again. He pulled out his pocket
handkerchief and dabbed at the sticky trickle of blood, then pressed it
against the wound.
He glanced up at the haut Rian, and the haut Pel, who floated over to examine
her handiwork. "She knocked him over with some kind of drug-mist. Stun on top
of that-is he in medical danger?"
"I think not," said Pel. She dismounted from her float-chair, knelt, and
rummaged through the unconscious haut Vio's sleeves, and came up with an
assortment of objects, which she laid out in a methodical row on the pavement.
One was a tiny silvery pointed thing with a bulb on the end. The haut Pel
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waved it under her lovely nose, sniffing. "Ah. This is it. No, he's in no
danger.
It will wear off harmlessly. He'll be very sick when he wakes up, though."
"Maybe you could give him a dose of synergine?" Miles pleaded.
"We have that available."
"Good." He studied the haut Rian. Only the Celestial Lady has the override.
But Rian had used it as one entitled, and no one had blinked, not even the
haut Vio. Have you grasped this yet, boy? Rian is the acting Empress of
Cetaganda, until tomorrow, and every move she's made has been with full, real,
Imperial authority. Handmaiden, ha. Another one of those impenetrable,
misleading haut titles that didn't say what it meant; you had to be in the
know.
Assured of Ivan's eventual recovery, Miles scrambled to his feet and demanded,
"What's happening now? How did you find
Ivan? Did you get all the gene banks back, or not? What did you-"
The haut Rian held up a restraining hand, to stem the flood of questions. She
nodded to the dead bubble-chair. "This is the
Consort of Sigma Ceta's float-chair, but as you see, the haut Nadina is not
with it."
"Ilsum Kety! Yes? What happened? How'd he diddle the bubble? How'd you detect
it? How long have you known?"
"Ilsum Kety, yes. We began to know last night, when the haut Nadina failed to
return with her gene bank. All the others were back and safe by midnight. But
Kety apparently only knew that his consort would be missed at this morning's
ceremonies. So he sent the haut Vio to impersonate her. We suspected at once,
and watched her."
"Why Ivan?"
"That, I do not know yet. Kety cannot make a consort disappear without great
repercussions; I suspect he meant to use your cousin to divest himself of
guilt somehow."
"Another frame, yes, that would fit his modus operandi. You realize, the haut
Vio... must have murdered the Ba Lura. At
Kety's direction."
"Yes." Rian's eyes, falling on the prostrate form of the brown-haired woman,
were very cold. "She too is a traitor to the haut.
That will make her the business of the Star Creches own justice."
Miles said uneasily, "She could be an important witness, to clear Barrayar and
me of blame in the disappearance of the Great
Key. Don't, um... do anything premature, till we know if that's needed, huh?"
"Oh, we have many questions for her, first."
"So... Kety still has his bank. And the Key. And a warning." Damn. Whose idiot
idea had it been... ? Oh. Yes. But you can't blame Ivan for this one. You
thought recalling the gene banks was a great move. And Rian bought it too.
Idiocy by committee, the finest kind. "And he has his consort, whom he knows
he cannot let live. Assuming she still lives now. I did not think... I would
be sending the haut Nadina to her death." The haut Rian stared at the far
wall, avoiding both Miles's and Pel's eyes.
Neither did I. Miles swallowed sickness. "He can bury her in the chaos of his
revolt, once it gets going. But he can't start his revolt yet." He paused.
"But if, in order to arrange her death in some artistic way that incriminates
Barrayar, he needs Ivan... I
don't think she'll be dead yet. Saved, held prisoner on his ship, yes. Not
dead yet." Please, not dead yet. "We know one other thing, too. The haut
Nadina is successfully concealing information from him, or even actively
misleading him. Or he wouldn't have tried what he just tried." Actually, that
could also be construed as convincing evidence that the haut Nadina was dead.
Miles bit his lip. "But now Kety's made enough overt moves to incriminate
himself, for charges to stick to him and not to me, yes?"
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Rian hesitated. "Maybe. He is clearly very clever."
Miles stared at the inert float-chair, sitting slightly canted, and looking
quite ordinary without its magical electronic nimbus.
"So are we. Those float-chairs. Somebody here must security-key them to their
operators in the first place, right? Would I be making too silly a wild-ass
guess if I suggested that person was the Celestial Lady?"
"That is correct, Lord Vorkosigan."
"So you have the override, and could encode this to anybody."
"Not to anybody. Only to any haut-woman."
"Ilsum Kety is expecting the return of this haut-bubble, after the ceremonies,
with a haut-woman and a Barrayaran prisoner, yes?" He took a deep breath. "I
think... we should not disappoint him."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"I found Ivan, sir." Miles smiled into the comconsole. The background beyond
Ambassador Vorob'yev's head was blurred, but the sounds of the buffet winding
down-subdued voices, the clink of plates-carried clearly over the comm. "He's
getting a tour of the Star Creche. We'll be here a while yet-can't insult our
hostess and all that. But I should be able to extract him and catch up with
you before the party's over. One of the ba will bring us back."
Vorob'yev looked anything but happy at this news. "Well. I suppose it will
have to do. But Colonel Vorreedi does not care for these spontaneous additions
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