"I don't know why I let you and Ivan talk me into this," she sighed to his ear.
"Because you like to dance," Miles stated with certainty. "Give me the first two, and I promise I'll find you a nice tall galactic diplomat for the rest of the evening."
"It's not that," she denied, eyeing his shortness.
"What I lack in height, I make up in speed."
"That's the trouble." She nodded vigorously.
Galeni turned over his modest vehicle to the waiting Imperial servant, who drove it away, and arranged his own lady's hand upon his arm. It took some knowledge of Galeni to read his saturnine features; Miles made him out as a little proud, a little smug, and a little embarrassed, as a man who arrives at a party wildly overdressed. Since Galeni, albeit almost painfully neat, scrubbed, shaved, and polished, wore the same dress green Service uniform with glittering insignia as Miles did, it could only be the effect of his companion.
He ought to be smug, thought Miles. Wait'll Ivan sees this.
If Laisa Toscane possessed more brains than beauty, she had to be some kind of genius. Yet the exact source of her intense physical impression was elusive. Her face was softly molded and pleasant, but not nearly as striking as, say, Elli Quinn's expensive sculpture. Her eyes were unusual, a brilliant blue-green, though whether the color was cosmetically or genetically conferred Miles could not tell. She was short even for a Komarran woman, two handspans shorter than Galeni, who was almost as tall as Delia. But her most distinctive feature was her skin, milk-white and almost seeming to glow—zaftig, Miles thought, was the word for that rich flesh. Plump was misleading, and not nearly enthusiastic enough. He had never seen anything so edibly female outside a Cetagandan haut-lady's force screen.
Wealth did not always confer taste upon its possessor, but when it did, the results could be impressive. She wore dark red, loose trousers in the Komarran style and a matching, low-cut top, made subtle with a boxy open jacket in cream and blue-green. Understated jewelry. Her hair was too dark to be called blond, too silvery to be called brown, and curled in short wisps in a forthrightly Komarran fashion. Her smile seemed pleased and excited, as she glanced up at her escort, but by no means overwhelmed. If she makes it past Aunt Alys, Miles decided, she's going to do just fine. He lengthened his stride to match Delia's, and bowed his little party indoors, as if Emperor Gregor's State dinner was his personal gift to them.
They were vetted through by the Imperial guards, and a majordomo who determined that they had no wraps to be relieved of, nor, under Miles's escort, further need of guidance. The next person they encountered was indeed Lady Alys Vorpatril, who stood at the foot of the staircase. Tonight she'd chosen a gown of dark blue velvet trimmed with gold, in salute perhaps to the Vorpatril colors of her long-deceased husband. She'd worn a widow's dove gray all through Miles's childhood, he seemed to recall, but had at length given it up, possibly about the same time she had finally forgiven Lord Vorpatril for getting himself killed in that particularly outrageous fashion during the War of Vordarian's Pretendership.
"Hello, Miles dear, Delia," she greeted them. Miles bowed over her hand, and introduced Captain Galeni and Dr. Toscane with more formality. Lady Alys nodded approval—Miles was relieved that Ivan had indeed followed through and arranged their addition to the guest list as promised, and not forgotten till some embarrassing last minute, or later. "Gregor is receiving everyone in the Glass Hall as usual," Lady Alys went on. "You'll be seated at his table for dinner, down from the Escobaran Ambassador and her husband—I thought we ought to intersperse the galactics with a few natives this time."
"Thanks, Aunt Alys." Miles glanced past her shoulder at a slight, familiar figure in officer's dress greens, standing in the shadows in the door to the left of the staircase and talking in low tones with an ImpSec guard. "Uh, Delia, would you show Duv and Laisa to the Glass Hall? I'll be right along."
"Sure, Miles." Delia smiled at Laisa, swept up her long skirts with the ease of practice, and led the Komarrans up the wide stairs.
"What a lovely young woman," stated Lady Alys, gazing after them.
"Ah, you mean Dr. Toscane?" Miles hazarded. "She was all right to bring, I take it."
"Oh, yes. She is the principal heiress of those Toscanes, you know. Quite appropriate," Alys spoiled this encomium somewhat by adding, "for a Komarran."
We all have our little handicaps. Lady Alys was employed by the Emperor to see that the Right people were admitted; but Miles had spotted the other member of the team, the man Gregor employed to see that the Safe people were admitted. Chief of Imperial Security Simon Illyan glanced up at last from his conversation with the ImpSec guard, who saluted him and disappeared through the doorway. Illyan did not smile or beckon Miles, but Miles ducked around Lady Alys and made for him anyway, trapping him before he could follow the guard.
"Sir." Miles gave him an analyst's salute; Illyan returned an even more modified version, a slightly frustrated wave more repelling than acknowledging. The ImpSec chief was a man in his early sixties, with brown hair going gray, a deceptively placid face, and a permanent habit of blending quietly into the background. Illyan was clearly on duty tonight supervising the Emperor's personal security, evidenced by the comm link earbug in his right ear and the charged lethal weapons on both hips. This meant either that there was more going on here tonight than Miles had been briefed about, or that there wasn't much going on anywhere else to nail Illyan down at HQ, and he'd left the routine to his bland and steady second-in-command Haroche. "Did your secretary give you my message, sir?"
"Yes, Lieutenant."
"He'd told me you were out of town."
"I was. I came back."
"Have you . . . seen my latest report?"
"Yes."
Damn. The words, There's something important I left out of it seemed to choke in Miles's throat. "I need to talk with you."
Illyan, always closed, seemed more expressionless than usual. "This is neither the time nor the place, however."
"Quite, sir. When?"
"I'm waiting on further information."
Right. If it wasn't hurry up and wait, it was wait and hurry up. But something must be about to break soon, or Illyan wouldn't have Miles dancing attendance in Vorbarr Sultana on a one-hour report-for-duty notice. If it's a new mission, I wish to hell he'd let me in on it. I could at least be starting some contingency planning. "Very good. I'll be ready."
Illyan nodded dismissal. But as Miles turned away, he added, "Lieutenant . . ."
Miles turned back.
"Did you drive here tonight?"
"Yes. Well, Captain Galeni did."
"Ah." Illyan seemed to find something mildly interesting to look at over the top of Miles's head. "Sharp man, Galeni."
"I think so." Giving up on prying anything further out of Illyan tonight, Miles hurried to catch up with his friends.
He found them all waiting for him in the broad corridor outside the Glass Hall; Galeni was chatting amiably with Delia, who seemed in no hurry to go in and find Ivan and her sister. Laisa was gazing around with obvious fascination at the handmade antiques and subtly colored patterned carpets lining the corridor. Miles strolled along with her to study the elaborate and painstaking inlay on a polished tabletop, a scene of running horses in the natural hues of the various woods.
"It's all so very Barrayaran," she confided to Miles.
"Does it meet your expectations?"
"Indeed, yes. How old do you suppose that table is—and what went through the mind of the craftsman who made it? Do you suppose he ever imagined us, imagining him?" Her sensitive-looking fingers ran over the polished surface, aromatic with fine scented wax, and she smiled.
"About two hundred years, and no, at a guess," said Miles.
"Hm." Her smile grew more pensive. "Some of our domes are over four hundred years old. And yet Barrayar seems older, even when it isn't. There is something intrinsically archaic about you, I think."
Miles reflected briefly upon the nature
of her homeworld. In another four hundred years, the terraforming on Komarr might begin to make it habitable for humans outdoors without breath masks. For now, the Komarrans lived all together in domed arcologies, as dependent upon their technology for survival against the choking chill as the Betans were on their screaming hot desert world. Komarr had never had a Time of Isolation, never been out of touch with the galactic mainstream. Indeed, it made its living fishing out of that stream, with its one vital natural resource—six important wormhole jump points in close practical proximity to one another. The jumps had made Komarran local space a nexus crossroads, and eventually, unfortunately, a strategic target. Barrayar had exactly one wormhole jump route connecting it to the galactic nexus—and it went through Komarr. If you did not hold your own gateway, those who did control it would own you.
Miles pulled his thoughts back to a smaller and more private human scale. Obviously, Galeni ought to take his lady out in the open Barrayaran air. She'd surely enjoy all those kilometers of un-Komarran wilderness. Hiking, say, or, if she truly favored the archaic—
"You ought to get Duv to take you horseback riding," Miles suggested.
"Goodness. Can he ride, too?" Her amazing turquoise eyes widened.
"Er . . ." Good question. Well, if not, Miles could give him a crash course. "Sure."
"Intrinsically archaic seems so . . ." She dropped her voice to a secretive tone—"intrinsically romantic. But don't tell Duv I said so. He's such a stickler for historical accuracy. The first thing he does is blow off all the fairy dust."
Miles grinned. "I'm not surprised. But I thought you were the practical businesswoman type, yourself."
Her smile grew more serious. "I'm a Komarran. I have to be. Without the value-added, from our trade, labor, transport, banking, and remanufacturing, Komarr would dwindle again to the desperate subsistence—and less-than-subsistence—level from which it rose. And seven out of ten of us would die, one way or another."
Miles twitched an interested brow; he thought her figures exaggerated, if obviously sincerely felt. "Well, we shouldn't hold up the parade. Shall we go in?"
He and Galeni rearranged themselves at the sides of their respective ladies, and Miles led the way through the nearby double doors. The Glass Hall was a long reception chamber lined on one side with tall windows, on the other with tall antique mirrors, hence its name, acquired when glass was a lot harder to come by.
Playing host rather than liege lord tonight, Gregor stood near the door in company with a few high government Ministers roped in for the occasion, greeting his guests. The Emperor of Barrayar was a lean, almost thin man in his mid-thirties, black-haired and dark-eyed. Tonight he wore well-cut civilian clothes, in the most conservative formal Barrayaran style, with a hint of the Vorbarra colors in the trim and side-piping on the trousers. Gregor was preternaturally quiet by choice when permitted to be. Not now, of course, when he was in Social Mode, a duty he disliked but, as with all his duties, did well anyway.
"Is that him?" Laisa whispered to Miles, as they waited for the group ahead of them to finish their pleasantries and move on. "I thought he would be in that fantastical military uniform one sees him wearing in all the vids."
"Oh, the parade red-and-blues? He only puts them on for the Midsummer Review, Birthday, and Winterfair. His grandfather Emperor Ezar was a real general before he was ever Emperor, and wore uniforms like a second skin, but Gregor feels he never was, despite his titular command of the Imperial forces. So he goes for his Vorbarra House uniform or something like this whenever etiquette permits. We all appreciate it vastly, because it lets us off the hook for wearing the damned things. The collar chokes you, the swords trip you, and the boot tassels catch on things." Not that the collar of the dress greens was much lower, and except for the tassels the tall boots were similar, but at his height Miles found the long sword of the pair a particular trial.
"I see," said Laisa. Her eyes twinkled in amusement.
"Ah. We're up." Miles shepherded his flock forward.
Delia had known Gregor all her life, and except for a brief word and smile of greeting stepped back to give the newcomers a chance.
"Yes, Captain Galeni, I've heard of you," Gregor said gravely, when Miles introduced the Komarran-born officer to him. Galeni looked for a split second as if he wasn't sure how to process this alarming tidbit of information, and Gregor added quickly, "Good things."
Gregor turned to Laisa, his gaze, for a moment, rather arrested. He recovered quickly, and bowed slightly over her hand, murmuring something polite and hopeful about Komarr as a welcome part of the Empire's future.
Once through the formalities, Delia led off in a search for Ivan and her sister among the thinly scattered, brilliantly dressed guests. The room was not nearly so jammed as for the Birthday or Winterfair. Laisa glanced back over her shoulder at Gregor. "Heavens. I nearly felt he was apologizing for conquering us."
"Well, not really," said Miles. "We didn't have much choice, after the Cetagandans invaded us through you. He was merely expressing sorrow for any personal inconveniences it may have caused which, all things considered, seem to be tailing off, thirty-five years after the fact. Multiplanet empires are a tricky balancing act. Though the Cetagandans have managed theirs for centuries, not that they would be my first pick as political role models."
"He doesn't seem exactly the stern personality your official news services project, does he?"
"More glum than stern, really—that's just how he comes out on the vid. Fortunately, perhaps."
They found their way temporarily blocked by a skinny old man doddering along with a cane; his ultraformal parade red-and-blues, correct right down to the two swords banging on his bony hips, hung loosely on him, and were oddly faded in color. Miles grabbed his guests and stepped back hastily to let him pass.
Laisa watched with interest. "Now who's the old General?"
"One of the most famous relics of Vorbarr Sultana," said Miles. "General Vorparadijs is the last surviving Imperial Auditor to have been personally appointed by Emperor Ezar."
"He looks rather military, for an auditor," said Laisa doubtfully.
"That's Imperial Auditor, with a capital A," Miles corrected. "And a capital Imp. Um . . . every society has to face the question, Who will guard the guardians? The Imperial Auditor is the Barrayaran-style answer. The Auditors are sort of a cross between, oh, a Betan Special Prosecutor, an Inspector General, and a minor deity.
"It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with accounting, though that's the origin of the title. The original 'counts were Voradar Tau's tax collectors. With that much money floating past my illiterate ancestors, they tended to grow sticky fingers. The Auditors policed the Counts for the Emperor. The unexpected arrival of an Imperial Auditor, usually with a large Imperial cavalry force, frequently triggered messy and unusual suicides. The Auditors used to get assassinated more in those days, too, but the early Emperors were really consistent in following those up with spectacular mass executions, and the Auditors became remarkably untouchable. It's said they used to be able to ride the countryside with bags of gold hanging off their saddles and almost no guards, and the bandits would secretly ride point to clear their paths, just to make sure the Auditors were sped out of their districts with no irritating delays. I think that's a legend, myself."
Laisa laughed. "It's a great story, though."
"There are supposed to be nine of them," put in Galeni. "A traditional number with several possible Old Earth origins. It's a favorite topic for undergraduate history papers. Though I believe there are only seven living Auditors at present."
"Are they appointed for life?" asked Laisa.
"Sometimes," said Miles. "Others are just appointed on a case-by-case basis. When my father was Regent, he only appointed acting Auditors, though Gregor confirmed several of their appointments when he reached his majority. In all matters pertaining to their investigations, they actually speak with the Emperor's Voice. That's another very Barrayaran thing. I
once spoke with the Count my Father's Voice, in a little murder investigation in my own District. It was a strange experience."
"It sounds really interesting, from a sociological view," said Laisa. "Do you suppose we could corner General Vorparadijs, and get him talking about old times?"
"No, no!" said Miles in horror. "It's the office that's interesting. Vorparadijs himself is the deadliest senile old Vor bore in Vorbarr Sultana. All he does is this monologue about how standards have gone to hell since Ezar's day," with pointed looks at me, usually, "interspersed with detailed accounts of his bowel troubles."