Miles, Mystery & Mayhem - Lois McMaster Bujold [117]
She floated closer, and raised one fine hand to touch his left cheek. It was the first time they had touched. But if she asked, Does it hurt?, he swore he'd bite her.
Rian was not a fool. "I have taken much from you," she spoke quietly, "and given nothing."
"It's the haut way, is it not?" Miles said bitterly.
"It is the only way I know."
The prisoner's dilemma . . .
From her sleeve, she removed a dark and shining coil, rather like a bracelet. A tiny hank of silken hair, very long, wound around and around until it seemed to have no end. She thrust it at him. "Here. It was all I could think of."
That's because it is all you have that you truly own, milady. All else is a gift of your constellation, or the Star Crèche, or the haut, or your Emperor. You live in the interstices of a communal world, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, owning . . . nothing. Not even your own chromosomes.
Miles took the coil from her. It was cool and smooth in his hand. "What does this signify? To you?"
"I . . . truly do not know," she confessed.
Honest to the end. Does the woman even know how to lie? "Then I shall keep it. Milady. For memory. Buried very deep."
"Yes. Please."
"How will you remember me?" He had absolutely nothing on him that he could give away right now, he realized, except for whatever lint the embassy laundry had left in the bottoms of his pockets. "Or will it please you to forget?"
Her blue eyes glinted like sun on a glacier. "There is no danger of that. You will see." She moved gently away from him. Her force-screen took form around her slowly, and she faded like perfume. The two bubbles floated after the Emperor to seek their places.
* * *
The dell was similar in design to the one where the haut had held the elegiac poetry recitations, only larger, a wide sloping bowl open to the artificial sky of the dome. Haut-lady bubbles and haut- and ghem-lords in white filled its sides. The thousand or so galactic delegates in all their muted garbs crowded its circumference. In the center, ringed by a respectfully unpeopled band of grass and flowers, sat another round force-dome, a dozen meters or more in diameter. Dimly through its misted surface Miles could see a jumble of objects piled high around a pallet, upon which lay the slight, white-clad figure of the haut Lisbet Degtiar. Miles squinted, trying to see if he could make out the polished maplewood box of the Barrayaran delegation's gift, but Dorca's sword was buried somewhere out of sight. It hardly mattered.
But he was going to have a ringside seat, a nearly Imperial view of it all. The final parade, down an alley cleared to the center of the bowl, was arranged in inverse order of clout; the eight planetary consorts and the Handmaiden in their nine white bubbles, seven—count 'em folks, seven—ghem-governors, then the Emperor himself and his honor guard. Benin blended into ghem-General Naru's former place without a ripple. Miles limped along in Giaja's train, intensely self-conscious. He must present an astonishing sight, slight, short, sinister, his face looking as if he'd lost a spaceport bar fight the night before. The Cetagandan Order of Merit made a fine show against his House blacks, quite impossible to miss.
Miles supposed Giaja was using him to send some kind of signal to his haut-governors, and not a terribly friendly one. Since Giaja clearly had no plans to let out the details of the past two weeks' events, Miles could only conclude it was one of those catch it if you can things, intended to unnerve by doubt as much as knowledge, a highly delicate species of terrorism.
Yeah. Let 'em wonder. Well, not them—he passed the Barrayaran delegation near the front of the galactic mob. Vorob'yev stared at him stunned. Maz looked surprised but pleased, pointing at Miles's throat and saying something to her fiancé. Vorreedi looked wildly suspicious. Ivan looked . . . blank. Thank you for your vote of confidence, coz.
Miles himself stared for a moment when he spotted Lord Yenaro in the back row of ghem-lords. Yenaro was dressed in the