"No - but I thought they'd never - tell you in the car," says Ivan disgustedly.

In the car, it transpires that Ivan was all set to... Ivan... with Ladies Arvin and Benello, the both of them, only to find that he'd been slipped the opposite of an aphrodisiac. Miles identifies the zlati ale as the likely vector, after Ivan insists on ruling out natural causes for the moment of underperformance. (Ivan is half-proud of his solution to the problem - he made up a Barrayaran custom obliging him to supply his lady-friends with three you know, ahem apiece before taking his own turn and managed to leave them both asleep and smiling.)

He threatens Miles's bodily integrity over the possibility of the incident being reported anywhere, although of course he wants a visit to the infirmary as soon as they reach it.

At any rate, this confirms that Yenaro has been setting them traps, though it does not guarantee that he's acting alone.

With that subject put to bed until Ivan can get medical attention, Ivan wants to know whether the Empress's dildo has been disposed of. He is not best pleased with the "yes... and no" reply he gets, and has to be cowed into continued nonreporting silence with their embassy co-occupants by allusions to delicate politics and the incompetence of the staff in local ImpSec offices.

Ivan, muttering, sheds his cousin as soon as the groundcar stops, making straight for the infirmary.

Miles, for his part, makes straight for the shower. His black House uniform is in critical laundry condition; that two-way trek through the mud to meet with Linyabel really did a number on it. The rest of him... well. It's not that he's particularly muddy - in fact, he might prefer mud to the sight of his own body, just now. If only he had a supply of black curtains with which to cover all the mirrors in his suite.

If how the lady sees him is the inverse of how he sees her - he's surprised she didn't run screaming. Well, the haut-women can see out of their bubbles just fine; perhaps she's used to the sight of inferior humanity, blotched and lumpy and unattractive as they are. Perhaps it's all the same to her, a ghem-lord or Ivan or Miles himself... She said she didn't want to marry a ghem-lord. Why not? He should have asked. No he shouldn't. Yes he should. He'll see if he can slip it in. Compare histories, if he can find any interesting parts of his that aren't top secret. Maybe she'd like to hear about his grandfather's horses.

The ghem-lords win their haut-wives through great deeds. The Vor and the ghem are not so different - he has that observation right from the expert-ish Maz. Just now, Miles is well placed to do something reasonably great... his interests and the haut Linyabel's and Barrayar's and the Cetagandan Emperor's, all neatly aligned. Retrieve the Key, save the haut-ladies a crypto-crisis of untold proportion, clear Barrayar's name of whatever the governor in question means to smear it with, forestall a probable civil war. All in a day's work for Miles the Magnificent, ha. At least he has only three governors to choose from. A triangle to triangulate.

Even if he does manage it, though—even if the Emperor chooses against all custom and precedent to give him that miraculous reward—it's no use if she doesn't like him. She smiled. Twice, even. Does that mean anything? Does he dare hope? He feels certain, in the total absence of evidence, that no ghem-lord has ever made her smile.

Well, the showering part is over, but the musing continues - this time on a somewhat different subject.

What are his handles on this situation? Lord Yenaro - the ba Lura - the identities of the three governors and the physical and political placement of their planets. He can steer embassy security in Yenaro's direction without too much trouble by complaining about the Autumn Leaves incident; he has no line whatsoever into the investigation of Lura's death; personal information about the governors is thin on the ground, but anybody can stare at a map...

So he finds a map and commences staring at it.

The map is hardly any help at all.

Rho Ceta, governed by Este Rond - closest to Barrayar, positioned to benefit from any conflict between the two empires by leading the charge and hogging the spoils. Granted, that didn't work out so well the first time the Cetagandans tried it, and Barrayar has only gotten stronger since. Still.

Sigma Ceta, governed by Ilsum Kety, and Xi Ceta, governed by Slyke Giaja - both on the opposite side of the Cetagandan Empire from Barrayar; both positioned to benefit from trouble with Barrayar by taking advantage of a freer rein while the rest of the Empire is distracted.

If only one of the three had been an interior planet, neither advantageously close nor advantageously far, to be thereby ruled out of his analysis - in fact, he muses, the interior planets are poorly placed to benefit from a scheme like this in general. If they tried to rebel, they'd be getting it from all sides, a veritable prefabricated ambush. But no: his list of suspects remains the same.

Ivan eventually comes back. The infirmary confirmed Miles's guess about how the poison was administered and the happy speculation about its longer-term harmlessness.

And Ivan is again demanding explanations on pain of going to Vorreedi, who doesn't seem incompetent amounts of paranoid to him.

Miles tells him - almost everything. Out of all the things in the wormhole nexus that definitely aren't Ivan's business in any way, surely the one thing that is the least Ivan's business is the haut Linyabel's extraordinary beauty and Miles's hopeless romantic aspirations thereto.

But the rest of it, sure. Everything relevant to the case at hand.

He ends with, "So I don't plan on reporting... yet. I do think now is the time to start documenting the whole business, private-like. But if I give it over, Vorreedi'll want to cut me out, and I truly don't think he should."

"Right. Just this once," warns Ivan. "You realize, coz, that if somebody notices there's a web being spun they look for the spider? Then what, O Mastermind?"

And he bows his way out of the room, eyebrows raised in ironic challenge.

The following morning, there is an unusual visitor, who Ambassador Vorob'yev announces to Miles under that designation alone. (When Vorob'yev is questioned, alas, the identity of the visitor is only ghem-colonel Dag Benin, not haut-lady Anybody.) He is assigned to Celestial Garden internal affairs and Miles has been brought to his "negative attention" with respect to the death of Ba Lura. And the embassy has decided to extend to the colonel the courtesy of an interview with Miles. Which means a bodyguard (as a status symbol) and monitoring of the conversation (not).

The ghem-colonel greets him politely enough.

The yo-yo is a charmingly primitive toy consisting of a pair of disks connected by a short stem, with a long string tied to the stem at a calculated degree of tension and looped at the other end to provide a grip. Skilled practitioners can make the thing dance the most amazing routines.

Miles takes the lead on this conversation so effectively, he feels almost as though he has attached a string to the good ghem-colonel's waist and is causing him to spin rapidly and hop up and down a few inches above the floor.

Has the investigation yet ruled that the death was a suicide? Benin indicates that they have - but his tone and expression indicate otherwise. Well, have they done tests to rule out the possibility that the ba was stunned elsewhere and then its throat slit on the spot by some unknown assailant? They have not. Can they? No, because the ba has already been cremated. Surely not at the investigator's behest? No, indeed, and why is Lord Vorkosigan so morbidly fascinated with this subject?

He admits to having solved murders before, without mentioning that the murder in question was singular, not plural. Do they get a lot of this sort of thing around here? No, they do not. Aha. He presses the cremation line: awfully premature, wasn't it? Benin assures him firmly that even the ceremonial guards would have noticed if Ba Lura had been hauled bodily into the funeral rotunda, dead, unconscious, or in any other state. Miles forges onward with his theories.

The body was only discovered when the procession actually entered the rotunda and found it there, and by the size of that pool of blood, it had to have been at least a solid quarter hour. Obviously, then, that exact spot must have been occluded to visual surveillance. Who would have known about this convenient gap? Someone a little higher up, perhaps - or a lot higher?

This provides Benin an opening with which to remind Miles that the questions here are supposed to be flowing the other way. Miles jerks the figurative string another time or two, then deigns to describe his original meeting with the haut Linyabel Miriat. To be specific, he describes the haut-lady as having taken him aside for a chat and asked him several polite but mystifyingly vague questions, which he is embarrassed to suspect might have been aimed at seeking a genetic explanation for his visible peculiarities. A genetic explanation which does not exist - he is always very clear on that point whenever it comes up.

From there he segues back into his helpful theorizing: haut-bubbles are so interesting, aren't they? How individually identifiable are they, and how easily borrowed? Could someone perhaps have stunned the ba, taken him into such a bubble, floated him into the rotunda therein, and arranged him in the blind spot before floating away again? Benin seems intrigued by this reasoning; he divulges that six haut-women crossed the chamber during the critical window. He has interviewed them all, along with the miscellaneous other personnel who did the same; none of these people admit to having seen the body. Surely the last one is lying, then? Benin attests that it is not that simple; Miles supposes that some of them might have passed by without noticing, if they kept to the other side of the chamber. Hm.

He drops a few words about the hazards of internal investigations and Benin's low rank - expendably low, you might say. Benin professes that these things are his problem. Miles is beginning to like the man. He helpfully lays out a line of subtly governorward reasoning: whoever arranged this murder must be high-ranking, with extensive access to internal security - if the ba has led an unexceptional life, perhaps the events leading to its death are very recent, concerning an individual who may perhaps have only been here a short time - if the ba left the Celestial Garden in the days leading up to its murder, perhaps it communicated with the murderer - the whole thing reeks of a rush job, desperation, panic, things that tend to follow from dramatic events taking place over a short period of time.

In closing, he offers to assist Benin with any further questions he may have and deftly deflects the suggestion that he answer them under fast-penta. Benin doesn't pursue the point; he didn't seem all that hopeful about it in the first place. It can't be very often that you get to administer interrogation drugs to foreign diplomats.

Miles is full of further questions for Benin, but he fears that if he keeps swinging this string around it will snap and the toy on the end will fly away. He only adds one more thing: a suggestion to the ghem-colonel that, given the delicate nature of his investigation and the high probability of the murderer being located in an upward direction along social and political ladders, he should travel all the way to the top as soon as possible, and make direct contact with his Emperor to request that his investigation be afforded protection from potential interference. Benin seems slightly alarmed by the suggestion, but allows that he will consider it.

Whew. Off he goes. Miles exerts considerable self-control to prevent himself from flopping to the ground and taking a much-needed nap in the middle of the hallway.

After the ghem-colonel has departed, Vorob'yev appears, accompanied by a man he introduces as Vorreedi. Vorob'yev compliments Miles on the conduction of his interview - open question who interviewed whom, really - and Vorreedi, perhaps charmed by Miles's interest in detective work, suggests arranging tours of local police organizations, declined due to lack of time.

Ivan also receives invitations, of which he will have to decline at least some due to lack of time - apparently the two ghem-ladies he absconded with at Yenaro's party and one of their friends are inviting him to things. Him alone. He declines to turn this into further opportunities for Miles's spidery behavior. Miles can meet the people he's directly interested in at official functions without intruding on Ivan's social ones.



Miles's next official function (Ivan bows out, claiming weariness from social engagements and further, contradictory and smugly exhausting, invitations), Miles is accompanied by Mia Maz and Vorob'yev both, and they are seated in much lower-status positions than the white-robed haut-men and the white-bubbled haut-women. There is a considerable amount of high-quality, subtly-read poetry from the haut-men (Maz explains that the women did their own similar ceremony the day before), which gets very wearing after long enough. The satrap governors go last. (Maz says that many of these poems have been ghostwritten by haut-ladies.)

Then: food.

Here there is an unbubbled haut-woman, not on a float chair at all: some ghem-general's award, dramatically older than Linyabel, silver-blonde and very closed in towards herself in the body language as she moves around. And another, over there, brown-haired and cinnamon-eyed, accompanying another husband-winner of the same presumable rank. (Maz seems to be making desperate facial expressions about them.)

"I see," murmurs Miles. He thinks back to his conversation with the haut Linyabel, and decides that under the circumstances, the rules were probably waived. "Thank you for the warning."

Vorob'yev proceeds to introduce Miles to the haut Este Rond, during which exchange Miles divines that the Rond must have been Vorob'yev's ticket into this extremely exclusive event, and also that even haut-lords seem to take note when Vorob'yev makes a recommendation. Miles actually receives a minute or so of Este Rond's undivided attention, for no obvious reason except that Vorob'yev introduced him personally.

Of course, the haut Rond might have other, less obvious reasons to be interested in Miles.

But over the course of their short conversation, nothing of substance is openly discussed, and Miles learns nothing either positive or negative about this governor's potential as a suspect. Finally, sensing waning interest, Miles ventures to ask, "Would you be so kind, haut Rond, as to introduce me to Governor haut Ilsum Kety?"

"Why, certainly, Lord Vorkosigan," says the haut Rond, with a thin smile that suggests he welcomes the opportunity to foist the offworlder on a fellow governor. He leads Miles over to Kety, who receives their visit with diplomatic displeasure. After formal greetings, Kety is impolite enough to let the conversation hang dead in the air; Miles tries Kety's ghem-general next, but General Chilian is an equally unpromising conversationalist, disgorging nothing more than a reluctant, "Lord Vorkosigan," before returning to silence. The general's haut-wife stands next to him like a very pretty, faintly contemptuous statue. Miles gives up, and tries the introduction gambit a second time.

"I wonder, haut Kety, if you would introduce me to Governor haut Slyke Giaja. As an Imperial relation of sorts myself, I can't help feeling he is something of my opposite number." Miles can't recall at the moment just how close an Imperial relation the haut Slyke in fact is, but they share a constellation - the Emperor's name is Fletchir Giaja - which implies some degree of genetic congruence.

This actually manages to startle a substantial response out of poor haut Kety. "I doubt Slyke would think so," he opines, but after weighing the request for a few moments he dispatches General Chilian to make inquiries on Miles's behalf. Miles watches the ghem-general pick his way across the room through the sparse crowd, attempts without success to lip-read their exchange, and observes that the haut Slyke has no unusual reactions to the request, although - unsurprisingly - he sends Chilian back with a polite refusal.

Miles concludes that the avenue of conversation with haut governors has been thoroughly explored, none of the three have proven distinguishable from innocent by their responses and reactions, and there is no further benefit to be had from hanging around annoying them further. He drifts off in no particular direction.

A ba - the same ba who has been showing him to Linyabel's hiding places - appears at his elbow.

"Lord Vorkosigan. My lady wishes to speak with you."