A white bubble waited in a cloistered walkway. The ba bowed to it and departed.

Miles cleared his throat. "Good evening, milady. You asked to see me? How may I serve you?" He kept his greeting as general as possible. For all he knew it was ghem-Colonel Benin and a voice-filter inside that damned blank sphere.

Rian's voice or a good imitation murmured, "Lord Vorkosigan. You expressed an interest in genetic matters. I thought you would care for a short tour."

Good. They were monitored, and she knew it. He suppressed the tiny part of himself that had been hoping against all reason for a love-affair cover, and answered, "Indeed, milady. All medical procedures interest me. I feel the corrections to my own damage were extremely incomplete. I'm always looking for new hopes and chances, whenever I have an opportunity to visit more advanced galactic societies."

He paced along beside her floating sphere, trying, and failing, to keep track of the twists and turns of their route, through archways and other buildings. He managed a suitably admiring comment or two on the passing scenery, so their silence would not be too obvious. He'd walked about a kilometer from the Emperor's buffet, he gauged, though certainly not in a straight line, when they came to a long, low white building. Despite the usual charming landscaping, it had "biocontrol" written all over it, in the details of its window seals and door-locks. The air lock required complicated encodations from Rian, though once it had identified her, it admitted him under her aegis without a murmur of protest.

She led him through surprisingly un-labyrinthine corridors to a spacious office. It was the most utilitarian, least artistic chamber he'd yet seen in the Celestial Garden. One entire wall was glass, overlooking a long room that had a lot more in common with galactic-standard bio-labs than with the garden outside. Form follows function, and this place was bristling with function: purpose, not the languid ease of the pavilions. It was presently deserted, shut down, but for a lone ba servitor moving among the benches doing some sort of meticulous janitorial task. But of course. No haut genetic contracts were approved or, presumably, carried out during the period of mourning for the Celestial Lady, putative mistress of this domain. A screaming-bird pattern decorated the surface of a comconsole, and hovered above several cabinet-locks. He was standing in the center of the Star Creche.

The bubble settled by one wall, and vanished without a pop. The haut Rian Degtiar rose from her float-chair.

Her ebony hair today was bound up in thick loops, tumbling no farther than her waist. Her pure white robes were only calf-length, two simple layers comfortably draped over a white bodysuit that covered her from neck to white-slippered toe. More woman, less icon, and yet . . . Miles had hoped repeated exposure to her beauty might build up an immunity in him to the mind-numbing effect of her. Obviously, he would need more exposure than this. Lots more. Lots and lots and—stop it. Don't be more of a idiot than you have to be.

"We can talk here," she said, gliding to a station chair beside the comconsole desk and settling herself in it. Her simplest movements were like dance. She nodded to another station chair across from hers, and Miles lurched into it with a strained smile, intensely conscious that his boots barely touched the floor. Rian seemed as direct as the ghem-generals' wives were closed. Was the Star Creche itself a sort of psychological force-bubble for her? Or did she merely consider him so sub-human as to be completely non-threatening, as incapable as a pet animal of judging her?

"I … trust you are correct," Miles said, "but won't there be repercussions from your Security for bringing me in here?"

She shrugged. "If they wish, they can request the Emperor to reprimand me."

"They cannot, er, reprimand you directly?"

"They? No."

The statement was flat, factual. Miles hoped she was not being overly optimistic. And yet … by the lift of her chin, the set of her shoulders, it was clear that the haut Rian Degtiar, Handmaiden of the Star Creche, firmly believed that within these walls she was empress. For the next eight days, anyway.

"I trust this is important. And brief. Or I'm going to emerge to find ghem-Colonel Benin waiting for an exit-interview."

"It's important." Her blue eyes seemed to blaze. "I know which satrap governor is the traitor, now!"

"Excellent! That was fast. Uh . . . how?"

"The Key was, as you said, a decoy. False and empty. As you knew." Suspicion still glinted in her eye, lighting upon him.

"By reason alone, milady. Do you have evidence?"

"Of a sort." She leaned forward intently. "Yesterday, Prince Slyke Giaja had his consort bring him to the Star Creche. For a tour, he pretended. He insisted I produce the Empress's regalia, for his inspection. His face said nothing, but he gazed upon the collection for a long time, before turning away, as if satisfied. He congratulated me upon my loyal work, and left immediately thereafter."

Slyke Giaja was certainly on Miles's short list. Two data points did not quite make a triangulation, but it was certainly better than nothing. "He didn't ask to see the Key demonstrated, to prove it worked?"

"Key? No."

"He knew, then." Maybe, maybe … "I bet we gave him food for thought, seeing his decoy sitting there all demure. I wonder which way he's going to jump next? Does he realize you know it's a decoy, or does he think you've been fooled?"

"I could not tell."

It wasn't just him, Miles thought with glum relief, even the haut couldn't read other haut. "He must realize he has only to wait eight days, and the truth will come out the first time your successor tries to use the Great Key. Or if not the truth, certainly the accusation against Barrayar. But is that his plan?"

"I don't know what his plan is."

"He wants to involve Barrayar somehow, that I'm sure of. Perhaps even provoke armed conflict between our states."

"This …" Rian turned one hand, curled as if around the stolen Great Key, "would be an outrage, but surely . . . not cause enough for war."

"Mm. This may only be Part One. This pis—angers you at us, logically Part Two ought to be something that angers us at you." An uncomfortable new realization. Clearly, Lord X—Slyke Giaja?—was not done yet. "Even if I'd handed the key back in that first hour—which I don't think was in his script—we still could not have proved we didn't switch it. I wish we hadn't jumped the Ba Lura. I'd give anything to know what story it was supposed to have primed us with."

"I wish you hadn't either," said Rian rather tartly, settling back in her station chair and twitching her vest, the first un-purposive move Miles had ever seen her make.

Miles's lips twisted in brief embarrassment. "But—this is important—the consorts, the satrap governors' consorts. You never told me about them. They're in on this, aren't they? Why not on both sides?"

She nodded reluctant acknowledgment. "But I do not suspect any of them of being involved in this treason. That would be … unthinkable."

"But surely your Celestial Lady used them—why unthinkable? I mean, here a woman's got a chance to make herself an instant empress, right along with her governor. Or maybe even independently of her governor."

The haut Rian Degtiar shook her head. "No. The consorts do not belong to them. They belong to us."

Miles blinked, slightly dizzy. "Them. The men. Us. The women. Right?"

"The haut-women are the keepers. …" She broke off, evidently hopeless of explaining it to an outlander barbarian. "It cannot be Slyke Giaja's consort."

"I'm sorry. I don't understand."

"It's … a matter of the haut-genome. Slyke Giaja is attempting to take something to which he has no right. It is not that he attempts to usurp the emperor. That is his proper part. It's that he attempts to usurp the empress. A vileness beyond . . . The haut-genome is ours and ours alone. In this he betrays not the empire, which is nothing, but the haut, which is everything."