"Then what?"

"The Ba came home in shame."

"So . . . why didn't the Ba call on Cetagandan security to shake us down and get the Great Key back on the spot?"

There was a longer silence. Then she said, "The Ba could not do that. But it confessed to me. And I came to you. To … humble myself. And beg for the return of my . . . charge and my honor."

'Why didn't the Ba confess to you the night before?"

"I don't know!"

"So while you set about your retrieval task, Ba Lura cut its throat."

"In great grief and shame," she said lowly.

"Yeah? Why not at least wait to see if you could coax the key back from me? So why not cut its throat privately, in its own quarters? Why advertise its shame to the entire galactic community? Isn't that a bit unusual? Was the Ba supposed to attend the bier-gifting ceremony?"

"Yes."

"And you were too?"

"Yes …"

"And you believed the Ba's story?"

"Yes!"

"Lady, I think you are lost in the woods. Let me tell you what happened in the personnel pod as I saw it. There were no six soldiers. Just me, my cousin, and the pod pilot. There was no conversation, no begging or pleading, no slurs on the Celestial Lady. Ba Lura just yelped, and ran off. It didn't even fight very hard. In fact, it scarcely fought us at all. Strange, don't you think, in a hand-to-hand struggle for something so important that the Ba slit its own throat over its loss the next day? We were left scratching our heads, holding the damned thing and wondering what the hell? Now you know that one of us, me or the Ba, is lying. I know which one."

"Give the Great Key to me," was all she could say. "It's not yours."

"But I think I was framed. By someone who apparently wants to drag Barrayar into a Cetagandan internal . . . disagreement. Why? What am I being set up for? "

Her silence might indicate that these were the first new thoughts to penetrate her panic in two days. Or … it might not. In any case, she only whispered, "Not yours!"

Miles sighed. "I couldn't agree with you more, milady, and I am glad to return your charge. But in light of the whole situation, I would like to be able to testify—under fast-penta, if need be—just who I gave the Great Key back to. You could be anyone, in that bubble. My Aunt Alys, for all I know. Or Cetagandan security, or … who knows. I will return it to you . . . face-to-face." He held out his hand half-open, the key resting invitingly across his palm.

"Is that . . . the last of your price?" if

"Yes. I'll ask no more." ff

It was a small triumph. He was going to see a haut-woman, and Ivan wasn't. It would doubtless embarrass the old dragon, to reveal herself to outlander eyes, but dammit, given the runaround Miles had suffered, she owed him something. And he was deathly serious about being able to identify where the Great Key went. The haut Rian Degtiar, Handmaiden of the Star Creche, was certainly not the only player in this game.

"Very well," she whispered. The white bubble faded to transparency, and was gone from between them.

"Oh," said Miles, in a very small voice.

She sat in a float-chair, clothed from slender neck to ankle in flowing robes of shining white, a dozen shimmering textures lying one atop another. Her hair glinted ebony, masses of it that poured down across her shoulders, past her lap, to coil around her feet. When she stood, it would trail on the floor like a banner. Her enormous eyes were an ice blue of such arctic purity as to make Lady Gelle's eyes look like mud-puddles. Skin . . . Miles felt he had never seen skin before, just blotched bags people wore around themselves to keep from leaking. This perfect ivory surface . . . his hands ached with the desire to touch it, just once, and die. Her lips were warm, as if roses pulsed with blood. . . .

How old was she? Twenty? Forty? This was a haut-woman. Who could tell? Who could care? Men of the old religion had worshipped on their knees icons far less glorious, in beaten silver and hammered gold. Miles was on his knees now, and could not remember how he'd come to be there.

He knew now why they called it "falling in love." There was the same nauseating vertigo of free fall, the same vast exhilaration, the same sick certainty of broken bones upon impact with a rapidly rising reality. He inched forward, and laid the Great Key in front of her perfectly shaped, white-slippered feet, and sank back, and waited.

I am Fortune's fool.

She bent forward, one graceful hand darting down to retrieve her solemn charge. She laid the Great Key in her lap, and pulled a long necklace from beneath her layered white garments. The chain held a ring, decorated with a thick raised bird-pattern, the gold lines of electronic contacts gleaming like filigree upon its surface. She inserted the ring into the seal atop the rod. Nothing happened.

Her breath drew in. She glared down at Miles. "What have you done to it!"

"Milady, I, I … nothing, I swear by my word as Vorkosigan! I didn't even drop it. What's . . . supposed to happen?"

"It should open."

"Um . . . um . . ." He would break into a desperate sweat, but he was too damned cold. He was dizzy with the scent of her, and the celestial music of her unfiltered voice. "There are only three possibilities, if there's something wrong with it. Someone broke it—not me, I swear!" Could that have been the secret of Ba Lura's peculiar intrusion? Maybe the Ba had broken it, and had been seeking a scapegoat upon whom to shuffle the blame? "—or someone's re-programmed it, or, least likely, there's been some kind of substitution pulled. A duplicate, or, or . . ."

Her eyes widened, and her lips parted, moving in some subvocalization.

"Not least likely?" Miles hazarded. "It would surely be the most difficult, but … it crosses my mind that maybe someone didn't think you would be getting it back from me. If it's a counterfeit, maybe it was meant to be on its way to Barrayar in a diplomatic pouch right now. Or … or something." No, that didn't quite make sense, but . . .

She sat utterly still, her face tense with panic, her hands clutching the rod.

"Milady, talk to me. If it's a duplicate, it's obviously a very good duplicate. You now have it, to turn over at the ceremony. So what if it doesn't work? Who's going to check the function of some obsolete piece of electronics?"

"The Great Key is not obsolete. We used it every day."

"It's some kind of data link, right? You have a time-window, here. Nine days. If you think it's been compromised, wipe it and re-program it from your backup files. If that thing in your hand is some kind of a non-working dummy, you've maybe got time to make a real duplicate, and re-program it." But don't just sit there with death in your lovely eyes. "Talk to me!"

"I must do as Ba Lura did," she whispered. "The Ba was right. This is the end."

"No, why?! It's just a, a thing, who cares? Not me!"

She held up the rod, her arctic-blue eyes fixing on his face at last. Her gaze made him want to scuttle into the shadows like a crab, to hide his merely human ugliness, but he held fast before her. "There is no backup," she said. "This is the sole key."

Miles felt faint, and it wasn't just from her perfume. "No backup?" he choked. "Are you people crazy?"

"It is a matter of … control."

"What does the damn thing really do, anyway?"

She hesitated, then said, "It is the data-key to the haut gene bank. All the frozen genetic samples are stored in a randomized order, for security. Without the key, no one knows what is where. To re-create the files, someone would have to physically examine and re-classify each and every sample. There are hundreds of thousands of samples—one for every haut who has ever lived. It would take an army of geneticists working for a generation to re-create the Great Key."