"Why not?" he murmured, then more loudly, "Why the hell not?"

His mother found him half an hour later, leading a press-ganged troop consisting of Martin and half her retainers. They were carrying all Miles's possessions down one flight and around the corner from the other wing, and spreading them through the bathroom, bedroom, sitting room, and study under Miles's somewhat random direction. "Miles, love, what are you doing?"

"Taking over Grandfathers rooms. Nobody else is using them now. Why not?" He waited, a little nervously, for some objection from her, mentally marshaling his defensive arguments.

"Oh, good idea. It's about time you got out of that little room upstairs. You've been in it since you were five, for heavens sake."

"That's . . . what I thought."

"We only picked that one for you because Illyan calculated it had the most disadvantageous angle for anyone trying to lob a projectile through the window."

"I see." He cleared his throat, and, emboldened, added, "I thought I'd take over the whole second floor, the Yellow Parlor, the other guest rooms, and all. I might . . . entertain, have people in, something."

"You can have the whole place, when we're off to Sergyar."

"Yeah, but I want a space even when you're here. I never needed it before. I was never around."

"I know. Now you're here and I'm gone. Life is odd like that, sometimes." She wandered away, humming.

With that many porters, the moving job only took an hour. Spread out into a more reasonable area, his life made a thin layer. There was at least a metric ton of Admiral Naismith s possessions back with the Dendarii Fleet, which Miles supposed he ought to retrieve somehow. No one else was likely to be able to use his clothing or his customized space armor, after all. He wandered about, rearranging things, trying to guess how he would use them here. It was all wonderfully unconstrained. He felt a sympathetic twinge of identification with those root-bound plants that had waited too long to be moved to bigger pots, not that he was exactly planning to vegetate. Spacer Quinn would call him a dirt-sucker. Quinn would be … half-right.

He owed her a message. He owed her several, and a major apology, for setting her couple of more recent queries aside in the rush of recent events. He settled himself at his newly moved comconsole. The city lights reflected in an amber haze from the cloudy sky. The back garden, seen out his wide study window, was luminous and soft in the snowy night.

He composed his face and his thoughts, and began. He recorded cheerful reassurances, medical and otherwise, and sent it by tight-beam; she'd receive it in a week or so, depending on where the Dendarii fleet was now. Rather to his surprise, a task that had seemed impossible earlier came easily now. Maybe he'd only needed to free his brain.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Miles decided to make a little ceremony out of returning his Auditors chain and seal to Gregor, along with the report. The traditional dignity of the office seemed to demand something more than just handing them back through the Residence door in a plastic bag. So he dressed in his brown-and-silver House uniform again, with all due care. He hesitated a long time before attaching his military decorations to his tunic, perhaps for the last time. But he was planning to ask Gregor for a very personal favor, and he would rather the decorations spoke for him than having to speak for himself.

He had qualms about that favor. It was only a little thing, taken all in all, and he felt obscurely that he ought to be rising above such petty concerns. But it mattered to him, like that extra centimeter of height that no one else noticed. He had Martin deliver him to the Residence's east portico, as before. Martin missed clipping Gregor's gates, this time; his handling of the Counts old groundcar was really vastly improved. Miles was ushered once again into Gregor s office in the north wing by Gregor's majordomo.

Gregor too must have had some ceremonial duties on his agenda this morning, for he was turned out in his Vorbarra House uniform, in his usual sharp style that was the envy of all Vor lords with less superior valets. He was waiting for Miles at his blank comconsole, his attention undivided by any data display.

"Good morning, my Lord Auditor." Gregor smiled.

"Good morning, Sire," Miles responded automatically. He laid down the data card in its security case on the smooth black glass of the desk, carefully pulled the chain and seal over his head, and let the heavy links spill through his hands before clinking them gently to the surface. "There you go. All done."

"Thank you." At a motion from the Emperor, the majordomo brought Miles a chair. Miles seated himself, and licked his lips, mentally thumbing through the several choices of opening lines he'd rehearsed for his request. But Gregor waved a small wait-please to both Miles and his majordomo, and both, necessarily, waited. He opened the security case, and ran the data card through his comconsole's read-slot. Then he handed it in its opened case to his majordomo, saying, "You can take this next door, now, please."

"Yes, Sire." The majordomo departed carrying the report on a small plate, like a servitor delivering some strange dessert.

Gregor sped through a scan of Miles's Auditors report, saying nothing more to indicate his opinion than a muttered "Huh," now and then. Miles's brows rose slightly, and he settled back in his chair. Gregor went back to the beginning, and examined selected sections more slowly. At last he finished, and let the data display fold back into itself, and disappear. He picked up the Auditors chain, and let it turn in the light, fingering the Vorbarra arms incised into the gold. "This was one of my more fortunate snap decisions, I must say, Miles."

Miles shrugged. "Chance put me in a place where I had some useful expertise."

"Was it chance? I seem to recall it was intent."

"The sabotage of Illyan s chip was an inside job; you needed an ImpSec insider to unravel it all. A lot of other men might have done what I did."

"No . . ." Gregor eyed him, measuringly. "I think I needed a former ImpSec insider. And I can't offhand think of any other man I know with both the passion and the dispassion to do what you did."

Miles gave up arguing about it; he only needed to be polite, not ingenuous. Besides, he might never get a better straight-line upon which to open his plea. "Thank you, Gregor." He took a breath.

"I've been thinking about an appropriate reward for a job well done," the Emperor added.

Miles let out his breath again. "Oh?"

"The traditional one is another job. I happen to have an opening for a new Chief of Imperial Security, this week."

Neutrally, Miles cleared his throat. "So?"

"Do you want it? While it has traditionally been held by a serving military officer, there is no law whatsoever saying I can't appoint a civilian to the task."

"No."

Gregor raised his brows at this concise certainty. "Truly?" he asked softly.

"Truly," Miles said firmly. "I'm not playing hard-to-get. It's a desk job stuffed with the most tedious routine, in between the terror-weeks, and the chief of ImpSec not only almost never gets off-planet further than Komarr, he scarcely ever gets out of Cockro—out of ImpSec HQ. I would hate it."

"I think you could do it."

"I think I could do almost anything I had to do, if you ordered it, Gregor. Is this an order?"

"No." Gregor sat back. "It was a genuine question."

"Then you have my genuine answer. Guy Allegre is much better fitted than I am for this job. He has the downside and the bureaucratic experience, and he's well respected on Komarr as well as on Barrayar. He is fully engaged with his work, and cares a lot about it, but he's not distorted by ambition. He's the right age, neither too young nor too old. No one will question his appointment."