Lois Bujold - Cetaganda

He returned immediately, to seal the door behind him and pounce on Miles. "Do you have any idea how much trouble we're in?" he cried.

Miles sat before the comconsole, re-reading the official, and entirely inadequate, description of the Great Key, while its image floated hauntingly before his nose above the vid plate. "Yes. I also know how we're going to get out of it. Do you know as much?"

This gave Ivan pause. "What else do you know that I don't?"

"If you will just leave it to me, I believe I can get this thing back to its rightful owner with no one the wiser."

"Its rightful owner is the Cetagandan emperor, according to what Maz said."

"Well, ultimately, yes. I should say, back to its rightful keeper. Who, if I read the signs right, is as chagrined about losing it as we are in finding it. If I can get it back to her quietly, I don't think she's going to go around proclaiming how she lost it. Although … I do wonder how she did lose it." Something was not adding up, just below his level of conscious perception.

"We mugged an Imperial servitor, that's how!"

"Yes, but what was Ba Lura doing with the thing on an orbital transfer station in the first place? Why had it disabled the security monitors in the docking bay?"

"Lura was taking the Great Key somewhere, obviously. To the Great Lock, for all I know." Ivan paced around the comconsole. "So the poor sod cuts its throat the next morning 'cause it lost its charge, its trust, courtesy of us—hell, Miles. I feel like we just killed that old geezer. And it never did us any harm, it just blundered into the wrong place and had the bad luck to startle us."

"Is that what happened?" Miles murmured. "Really . . . ?" Is that why I am so desperately determined for the story to be something, anything, else? The scenario hung together. The old Ba, charged with transporting the precious object, loses the Great Key to some outlander barbarians, confesses its disgrace to its mistress, and kills itself in expiation. Wrap. Miles felt ill. "So … if the key was that important, why wasn't the Ba traveling with a squadron of Imperial ghem-guards?"

"God Miles, I wish it had been!"

A firm knock sounded on Miles's door. Miles hastily shut down the comconsole and unsealed the door lock. "Come in."

Ambassador Vorob'yev entered, and favored him with a semi-cordial nod. He held a sheaf of delicately colored, scented papers in his hand.

"Hello, my lords. Did you find your tutorial with Maz useful?"

"Yes, sir," said Miles.

"Good. I thought you would. She's excellent." Vorobyev held up the colored papers. "While you were in session, this invitation arrived for you both, from Lord Yenaro. Along with assorted profound apologies for last night's incident. Embassy security has opened, scanned, and chemically analyzed it. They report the organic esters harmless." With this safety pronouncement, he handed the papers across to Miles. "It is up to you, whether or not to accept. If you concur that the unfortunate side-effect of the sculpture's power field was an accident, your attendance might be a good thing. It would complete the apology, repairing face all around."

"Oh, we'll go, sure." The apology and invitation were hand-calligraphed in the best Cetagandan style. "But I'll keep my eyes open. Ah . . . wasn't Colonel Vorreedi due back today?"

Vorob'yev grimaced. "He's run into some tedious complications. But in view of that odd incident at the Marilacan embassy, I've sent a subordinate to replace him. He should be back tomorrow. Perhaps … do you wish a bodyguard? Not openly, of course, that would be another insult."

"Mm . . . we'll have a driver, right? Let him be one of your trained men, have backup on call, give us both comm links, and have him wait for us nearby."

"Very well, Lord Vorkosigan. I'll make arrangements," Vorob'yev nodded. "And . . . regarding the incident in the rotunda earlier today—"

Miles's heart pounded. "Yes?"

"Please don't break ranks like that again."

"Did you receive a complaint?" And from whom?

"One learns to interpret certain pained looks. The Cetagandans would consider it impolite to protest—but should unpleasant incidents pile high enough, not too impolite for them to take some sort of indirect and arcane retaliation. You two will be gone in ten days, but I will still be here. Please don't make my job any more difficult than it already is, eh?"

"Understood, sir," said Miles brightly. Ivan was looking intensely worried—was he going to bolt, pour out confessions to Vorob'yev? Not yet, evidently, for the ambassador waved himself back out without Ivan throwing himself at his feet.

"Nearby doesn't cut it, for a bodyguard," Ivan pointed out, as soon as the door sealed again.

"Oh, you're beginning to see it my way now, are you? But if we go to Yenaro's at all, I can't avoid risk. I have to eat, drink, and breathe—all routes for attack an armed guard can't do much about. Anyway, my greatest defense is that it would be a grievous insult to the Cetagandan emperor for anyone to seriously harm a galactic delegate to his august mother's funeral. I predict, should another accident occur, it will be equally subtle and non-fatal." And equally infuriating.

"Oh, yeah? When there's been one fatality already?" Ivan stood silent for a long time. "Do you think . . . all these incidents could possibly be related?" Ivan nodded toward the perfumed papers still in Miles's hand, and toward the comconsole desk drawer. "I admit, I don't see how."

"Do you think they could possibly all be unrelated coincidences?"

"Hm." Ivan frowned, digesting this. "So tell me," he pointed again to the desk drawer, "how are you planning to get rid of the Empress's dildo?"

Miles's mouth twitched, stifling a grin at the Ivan-diplomatic turn of phrase. "I can't tell you." Mostly because I don't know yet myself. But the haut Rian Degtiar had to be scrambling, right now. He fingered, as if absently, the silver eye-of-Horus ImpSec insignia pinned to his black collar. "There's a lady's reputation involved."

Ivan's eyes narrowed in scorn of this obvious appeal to Ivan's own brand of personal affairs. "Horseshit. Are you running some kind of secret rig for Simon Illyan?"

"If I were, I couldn't tell you, now could I?"

"Damned if I know." Ivan stared at him in frustration for another moment, then shrugged. "Well, it's your funeral."

"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."