"Thank you." Miles closed the channel. "All right."

The woman seated herself on a rickety bench and drew her robes around herself with the air of one preparing for a lengthy wait. Miles followed the ba out the gate and past another residence, across a roadway, and into a shallow wooded ravine. The ba produced a hand-light to prevent stumbles on rocks and roots, politely playing it before Miles's polished boots, which were going to be a lot less polished if this went on very far … they climbed up out of the ravine into what was obviously the back portion of another suburban estate in an even more neglected condition than Yenaro's.

A dark bulk looming through the trees was an apparently deserted house. But they turned right on an overgrown path, the ba pausing to sweep damp branches out of Miles's way, and then back down toward the stream. They emerged in a wide clearing where a wooden pavilion stood—some ghem-lord's former favorite picnic spot for al fresco brunches, no doubt. Duckweed choked a pond, crowding out a few sad water-irises. They crossed the pond on an arched footbridge, which creaked so alarmingly Miles was momentarily glad he was no bigger. A faint, familiar pearlescent glow emanated from the pavilion's vine-veiled openings. Miles touched the Great Key hidden in his tunic, for reassurance. Right. This is it.

The ba servitor pulled aside some greenery, gestured Miles inside, and went to stand guard by the footbridge. Cautiously, Miles stepped within the small, one-roomed building.

The haut Rian Degtiar or a close facsimile sat, or stood, or something, the usual few centimeters above the floor, a blank pale sphere. She had to be riding in a float-chair. Her light seemed dimmed, stopped down to a furtive feeble glow. Wait. Let her make the first move. The moment stretched. Miles began to be afraid this conversation was going to be as disjointed as their first one, but then she spoke, in the same breathless, transmission-flattened voice he had heard before. "Lord Vorkosigan. I have contacted you as I said I would, to make arrangements for the safe return of my . . . thing."

"The Great Key," said Miles.

"You know what it is now?"

"I've been doing a little research, since our first chat."

She moaned. "What do you want of me? Money? I have none. Military secrets? I know none."

"Don't go coy on me, and don't panic. I want very little." Miles unfastened his tunic, and drew out the Great Key.

"Oh, you have it here! Oh, give it to me!" The pearl bobbed forward.

Miles stepped back. "Not so fast. I've kept it safe, and I'll give it back. But I feel I should get something in return. I merely want to know exactly how it came to be delivered, or mis-delivered, into my hands, and why."

"It's no business of yours, Barrayaran!"

"Perhaps not. But every instinct I own is crying out that this is some kind of setup, of me, or of Barrayar through me, and as a Barrayaran ImpSec officer that makes it very explicitly my business. I'm willing to tell you everything I saw and heard, but you must return the favor. To start with, I want to know what Ba Lura was doing with a piece of the late Empress's major regalia on a space station."

Her voice went low and tart. "Stealing it. Now give it back."

"A key. A key is not of great worth without a lock. I grant it's a pretty elegant historical artifact, but if Ba Lura was planning on a privately funded retirement, surely there are more valuable things to steal from the Celestial Garden. And ones less certain to be missed. Was Lura planning to blackmail you? Is that why you murdered it?" A completely absurd charge—the haut-lady and Miles were each other's alibis—but he was curious to see what it would stir up in the way of response.

The reaction was instantaneous. "You vile little—! I did not drive Lura to its death. If anything, you are responsible!"

God, I hope not. "This may be so, and if it is, I must know. Lady—there is no Cetagandan security within ten kilometers of us right now, or you could have them strip this bauble off me and dump my carcass in the nearest alleyway right now. Why not? Why did Ba Lura steal the Great Key—for its pleasure? The Ba makes a hobby of collecting Cetagandan Imperial regalia, does it?"

"You are horrible!"

"Then to whom was Ba Lura taking the thing to sell?"

"Not sell!"

"Ha! Then you know who!"

"Not exactly . . ." she hesitated. "Some secrets are not mine to give. They belong to the Celestial Lady."

"Whom you serve."

"Yes."

"Even in death."

"Yes." A note of pride edged her voice.

"And whom the Ba betrayed. Even in death."

"No! Not betrayed . . . We had a disagreement."

"An honest disagreement?"

"Yes."

"Between a thief and a murderess?"

"No!"

Quite so, but the accusation definitely had her going. Some guilt, there. Yeah, tell me about guilt. "Look, I'll make it easy for you. I'll begin. Ivan and I were coming over from the Barrayaran courier jump-ship in a personnel pod. We docked into this dump of a freight bay. The Ba Lura, wearing a station employee uniform and some badly applied false hair, lumbered into our pod as soon as the lock cycled open, and reached, we thought, for a weapon. We jumped it, and took away a nerve disrupter and this." Miles held up the Great Key. "The Ba shook us off and escaped, and I stuck this in my pocket till I could find out more. The next time I saw the Ba it was dead in a pool of its own blood on the floor of the funeral rotunda. I found this unnerving, to say the least. Now it's your turn. You say Ba Lura stole the key from your charge. When did you discover the Great Key was missing?"

"I found it missing from its place . . . that day."

"How long could it have been gone? When had you last checked it?"

"It is not being used every day now, because of the period of mourning for the Celestial Lady. I had last seen it when I arranged her regalia . . . two days before that."

"So potentially, it could have been missing for three days before you discovered its absence. When did the Ba go missing?"

"I'm . . . not sure. I saw Ba Lura the evening before."

"That cuts it down a little. So the Ba could have been gone with the key as early as the previous night. Do the ba servitors pass pretty freely in and out of the Celestial Garden, or is it hard?"

"Freely. They run all our errands."

"So Ba Lura came back . . . when?"

"The night of your arrival. But the Ba would not see me. It claimed to be sick. I could have had it dragged into my presence, but … I did not want to inflict such an indignity."

They were in it together, right.

"I went to see the Ba in the morning. The whole sorry story came out then. The Ba was trying to take the Great Key to … someone, and entered into the wrong docking bay."

"Then someone was supposed to supply a personnel pod? Then someone was waiting on a ship in orbit?"

"I didn't say that!"

Keep pressing her. It's working. Though it did make him feel faintly guilty, to be badgering the distraught old lady so, even if possibly for her own good. Don't let up. "So the Ba blundered onto our pod, and—what was the rest of its story? Tell me exactly!"

"Ba Lura was attacked by Barrayaran soldiers, who stole the Great Key."

"How many soldiers?"

"Six."

Miles s eyes widened in delight. "And then what?"

"Ba Lura begged for its life, and head and honor, but they laughed and ejected the Ba, and flew away."

Lies, lies at last. And yet . . . the Ba was only human. Anyone who had screwed up so hugely might re-tell the story so as to make themselves look less at fault. "What exactly did it say we said?"

Her voice grated with anger. "You insulted the Celestial Lady."