Not too sorry, then.

“It's my good luck and your bad that you happen to be the man physically closest to this mess. Briefly, one of our Komarr-based trade fleets put in at a deep-space facility out near Sector V, for resupply and cargo transfer. One—or more, the reports are unclear—of the officers from its Barrayaran military escort either deserted, or was kidnapped. Or was murdered—the reports are unclear about that , too. The patrol the fleet commander sent to retrieve him ran into trouble with the locals. Shots—I phrase this advisedly—shots were fired, equipment and structures were damaged, people on both sides were apparently seriously injured. No other deaths reported yet, but that may have changed by the time you get this, God help us.

“The problem—or one of them, anyway—is that we're getting a significantly different version of the chain of events from the local ImpSec observer on the Graf Station side of the conflict than we're getting from our fleet commander. Yet more Barrayaran personnel are now reported either held hostage, or arrested, depending on which version one is to believe. Charges filed, fines and expenses mounting, and the local response has been to lock down all ships currently in dock until the muddle is resolved to their satisfaction. The Komarran cargomasters are now screaming back to us over the heads of their Barrayaran escort, with yet a third spin on events. For your, ah, delectation, all the original reports we've received so far from all the viewpoints are appended to this message. Enjoy.” Gregor grimaced in a way that made Miles twitch.

“Just to add to the delicacy of the problem, the fleet in question is about fifty percent Toscane-owned.” Gregor's new wife, Empress Laisa, was a Toscane heiress and a Komarran by birth, a political marriage of enormous importance to the peace of the fragile union of planets that was the Imperium. “The problem of how to satisfy my in-laws while simultaneously presenting the appearance of Imperial evenhandedness to all their Komarran commercial rivals—I leave to your ingenuity.” Gregor's thin smile said it all.

“You know the drill. I request and require you, as my Voice, to get yourself to Graf Station with all safe speed and sort out the situation before it deteriorates further. Pry all my subjects out of the hands of the locals and get the fleet back on its way. Without starting a war, if you please, or breaking my Imperial budget.

“And, critically, find out who's lying. If it's the ImpSec observer, that's a problem to bounce to their chain of command. If it's the fleet commander—who is Admiral Eugin Vorpatril, by the way—it becomes . . . very much my problem.”

Or rather, very much the problem of Gregor's proxy, his Emperor's Voice, his Imperial Auditor. Namely Miles. Miles considered the interesting pitfalls inherent in attempting, without backup, far from home, to arrest the ranking military officer out of the middle of his long-standing and possibly personally loyal command. A Vorpatril, too, scion of a Barrayaran aristocratic clan of far-flung and important political connections within the Council of Counts. Miles's own aunt and cousin were Vorpatrils. Oh, thank you, Gregor.

The Emperor continued, “In matters rather closer to Barrayar, something has stirred up the Cetagandans around Rho Ceta. No need to go into the peculiar details here, but I would appreciate it if you would settle this impoundment crisis as swiftly and efficiently as you can. If the Rho Cetan business becomes any more peculiar, I'll want you safely home. The communications lag between Barrayar and Sector V is going to be too long to for me to breathe over your shoulder, but some occasional status or progress reports from you would be a nice touch, if you don't mind.” Gregor's voice did not change to convey irony. It didn't need to. Miles snorted. “Good luck,” Gregor concluded. The image on the viewer returned to a mute display of the Imperial Seal. Miles reached forward and keyed it off. The detailed reports, he could study once he was en route.

He? Or we ?

He glanced up at Ekaterin's pale profile; she turned her serious blue eyes toward him. He asked, “Do you want to go with me, or continue on home?”

“Can I go with you?” she asked doubtfully.

“Of course you can! The only question is, would you like to?”

Her dark brows rose. “Not the only question, surely. Do you think I'd be of any use, or would I just be a distraction from your work?”

“There's official use, and there's unofficial use. Don't bet that the first is more important than the second. You know the way people talk to you to try to get oblique messages to me?”

“Oh, yes.” Her lips twisted in distaste.

“Well, yes, I realize it's tedious, but you're very good at sorting them out, you know. Not to mention the information to be obtained just from studying the kinds of lies people tell. And, ah—not-lies. There may well be people who will talk to you who won't talk to me, for one reason or another.”

She conceded the truth of this with a little wave of her free hand.

“And . . . it would be a real relief for me to have someone along I can talk to freely.”

Her smile tilted a little at this. “Talk, or vent?”

“I—hem!—suspect this one is going to entail quite a lot of venting, yes. D'you think you can stand it? It could get pretty thick. Not to mention boring.”

“You know, you keep claiming your job is boring, Miles, but your eyes have gone all bright.”

He cleared his throat and shrugged unrepentantly.

Her amusement faded, and her brows drew down. “How long do you think this sorting out will take?”

He considered the calculation she had doubtless just made. It would be six more weeks, give or take a few days, to the scheduled births. Their original travel plan would have put them back at Vorkosigan House a comfortable month early. Sector V was in the opposite direction from their present location to Barrayar, insofar as the network of jump points people navigated to get from here to there could be said to have a direction. Several days to get from here to Graf Station, plus an extra two weeks of travel at least to get home from there, even in the fastest of fast couriers. “If I can settle things in less than two weeks, we can both get home on time.”

She breathed a short laugh. “For all that I try to be all modern and galactic, that feels so strange. All sorts of men don't make it home for the births of their children. But My mother was out of town on the day I was born, so she missed it , just seems . . . seems like a more profound complaint, somehow.”

“If it runs over, I suppose I could send you home on your own, with a suitable escort. But I want to be there, too.” He hesitated. It's my first time, dammit, of course it's making me crazy, was a statement of the obvious that he managed to stop on his lips. Her first marriage had left her riddled with sensitive scars, none of them physical, and this topic trod near several of them. Rephrase, O Diplomat . “Does it . . . make it any easier, that it's the second time, for you?”

Her expression grew introspective. “Nikki was a body birth; of course everything was harder. The replicators take away so many risks—our children could get all their genetic mistakes corrected, they won't be subject to damage from a bad birth—I know replicator gestation is better, more responsible, in every way. It's not as though they are being shortchanged . And yet . . .”

He raised her hand and touched her knuckles to his lips. “You're not shortchanging me , I promise you.”

Miles's own mother was adamantly in favor of the use of replicators, with cause. He was reconciled now, at age thirty-odd, with the physical damage he had taken in her womb from the soltoxin attack. Only his emergency transfer to a replicator had saved his life. The teratogenic military poison had left him stunted and brittle-boned, but a childhood's agony of medical treatments had brought him to nearly full function, if not, alas, full height. Most of his bones had been replaced piecemeal with synthetics thereafter, emphasis on the pieces . The rest of the damage, he conceded, was all his own doing. That he was still alive seemed less a miracle than that he had won Ekaterin's heart. Their children would not suffer such traumas.