"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.

"Comm 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, and escorted 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 to 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."