"If you please, Colonel."

The protocol officer left with his corporal. Miles, with a grateful parting wave to Vorob'yev, tagged along after Ivan, who clutched the colored papers firmly and eyed him with suspicion.

"Mine," Ivan asserted, as soon as they were out of earshot. "You have ghem-Colonel Benin, who is more to your taste anyway."

"There are a lot of ghem-women here in the capital who serve as ladies-in-waiting to the haut-women in the Celestial Garden, is all," Miles said. "I'd . . . like to meet that ghem-lady I went walking with last night, for instance, but she didn't give me her name."

"I doubt many of Yenaro's crowd have celestial connections."

"I think this one was an exception. Though the people I really want to meet are the satrap governors. Face-to-face."

"You'd have a better chance at that at one of the official functions."

"Oh, yes. I'm planning on it."

The Celestial Garden was not quite so intimidating on the second visit, Miles assured himself. This time they were not lost in a great stream of galactic envoys, but were only a little party of three. Miles, Ambassador Vorob'yev, and Mia Maz were admitted through a side gate, almost privately, and escorted by a single servitor to their destination.

The trio made a good picture. Miles and the ambassador wore their ultra-formal House blacks again. Maz wore black linings and pure white over-robes, combining the two mourning colors, acknowledging the Cetagandan hue without over-stepping the boundaries of haut-privilege. No accident that it also displayed her own dark hair and lively complexion to advantage, and set off her two companions as well. Her dimple flashed with her smile of anticipation and pleasure, directed over Miles's head to Ambassador Vorob'yev. Miles, between them, felt like an unruly lad being escorted firmly by his two parents. Vorob'yev was taking no chances of unauthorized violations of etiquette today.

The offering of the elegiac poetry to the dead empress was not a ceremony normally attended by galactic delegates, with the exception of a very few high-ranking Cetagandan allies. Miles did not qualify on either count, and Vorob'yev had been forced to pull every string he owned to get them this invitation. Ivan had ducked out, pleading weariness from the court-dance practice and the fire-viewing parties of yesterday, and the excuse of four more invitations for this afternoon and evening. It was a suspiciously smug weariness. Miles had let him escape, his sadistic urge to make Ivan sit along with him through what promised to be an interminable afternoon and evening blunted by the reflection that his cousin could do little to contribute to what was essentially an information-gathering expedition. And Ivan might—just might—pick up some useful new contacts among the ghem. Vorob'yev had substituted the Vervani woman, to her obvious delight, and Miles's benefit.

To Miles's relief the ceremony was not carried out in the rotunda, with all its alarming associations, where the empress's body still lay. Neither did the haut use anything so crass as an auditorium, with people packed in efficient rows. Instead the servitor took them to a—dell, Miles supposed he might call it, a bowl in the garden lined with flowers, plants, and hundreds of little box-seat arrangements overlooking a complex array of daises and platforms at the bottom. As befitted their rank, or lack of it, the servitor placed the Barrayaran party in the last and highest row, three quarters of the way around from the best frontal view. This suited Miles—he could watch nearly the whole audience without being over-looked himself. The low benches were flawless wood, hand-smoothed to a high polish. Mia Maz, bowed gallantly to her seat by Vorob'yev, patted her skirts and stared around, bright-eyed.

Miles stared too, much less bright-eyed—he'd spent a great deal of time the last day peering into his comconsole display, swotting up background in hopes of finding an end to this tangle. The haut were filtering in to their places, men in flowing snowy robes escorting white bubbles. The dell was beginning to resemble a great bank of white climbing roses in a frenzy of bloom. Miles finally saw the purpose of the box seats—it gave room for the bubbles. Was Rian among them?

"Will the women speak first, or how do they organize this?" Miles asked Maz.

"The women won't speak at all, today," said Maz. "They had their own ceremony yesterday. They'll start with the men of lowest rank and work up through the constellations."

Ending with the satrap governors. All of them. Miles settled himself with the patience of a panther in a tree. The men he had come to see were filing into the bottom of the bowl even now. If Miles had owned a tail, it would have twitched. As it was, he stilled a tapping boot.

The eight satrap governors, assisted by their highest-ranking ghem-officers, sank into seats around a raised reserved dais. Miles squinted, wishing for rangefinder binoculars—not that he could have carried them past the tight security. With a twinge of sympathy he wondered what ghem-Colonel Benin was doing right now, and if Cetagandan security went as frantic behind the scenes as Barrayaran security did at any ceremony involving Emperor Gregor. He could just picture them.

But he had what he'd come for—all eight of his suspects, artistically arranged on display. He studied his top four with particular care.

The governor of Mu Ceta was one of the Degtiar constellation, the present emperor's half-uncle, being half-brother to the late empress. Maz too watched closely as he settled his aged body creakily into his seat, and brushed away his attendants with jerky, irritated motions. The governor of Mu Ceta had been at his present post only two years, replacing the governor who had been recalled, and subsequently quietly exiled into retirement after the Vervain invasion debacle. The man was very old, and very experienced, and had been chosen explicitly to calm Vervani fears of a re-match. Not, Miles thought, the treasonous type. Yet by haut Rian's testimony, every man in the circle had taken at least one step over the line, secretly receiving the unauthorized gene banks.

The governor of Rho Ceta, Barrayar's nearest neighbor, worried Miles a great deal more. The haut Este Rond was middle-aged and vigorous, haut-tall though unusually heavy. His ghem-officer stood well back from his governor's sweeping movements. Rond's general effect was bullish. And he was bullishly tenacious in his efforts, diplomatic and otherwise, to improve Cetaganda's trade access through the Barrayaran-controlled Komarr wormhole jumps. The Rond was one of the more junior haut-constellations, seeking growth. Este Rond was a hot prospect for sure.

The governor of Xi Ceta, Maniacs neighbor, wafted in, proud-nosed. The haut Slyke Giaja was what Miles thought of as a typical haut-lord, tall and lean and faintly effeminate. Arrogant, as befit a younger half-brother of the emperor. And dangerous. Young enough to be a possibility, though older than Este Rond.

The youngest suspect, the haut Ilsum Kety governor of Sigma Ceta, was a mere stripling of forty-five or so. In body type he was much like Slyke Giaja, who was in fact a cousin of his through their mothers' who were half-sisters though of different constellations. Haut family trees were even more confusing than the Vors'. It would take a full-time geneticist to keep track of all the semi-siblings.

Eight white bubbles floated into the basin, and took up an arc to the left of the circle of satrap governors. The ghem-officers took up a similar arc to the right. They, Miles realized, were going to get to stand through the entire afternoon's ceremony. Being a ghem-general wasn't all blood and beer. But could any of those bubbles be . . . ?