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"You must be good at keeping a straight face, or you could not function so well here."

Her dimple winked at him. "Yes, my lord."

Ah yes, Vervain was one of those so-called democracies; not quite as insanely egalitarian as the Betans, but they had a definite cultural drift in that direction. "My mother would agree with you," Miles conceded. "She would have seen no inherent difference between the two corpses in the rotunda. Except their method of arriving there, of course. I take it this suicide was an unusual and unexpected event?"

"Unprecedented," said Maz, "and if you know Cetagandans, you know just how strong a term that is."

"So Cetagandan servants do not routinely accompany their masters in death like a pagan sacrifice."

"I suppose the Ba Lura was unusually close to the Empress, it had served her for so long," said the Vervani woman. "Since before any of us were born."

"Ivan was wondering if the haut-lords cloned their servants."

Ivan cast Miles a slightly dirty look, for being made the stalking horse, but did not voice an objection.

"The ghem-lords sometimes do," said Maz, "but not the haut-lords, and most certainly never the Imperial Household. They consider each servitor as much a work of art as any of the other objects with which they surround themselves. Everything in the Celestial Garden must be unique, if possible handmade, and perfect. That applies to their biological constructs as well. They leave mass production to the masses. I'm not sure if it's a virtue or a vice, the way the haut do it, but in a world flooded with virtual realities and infinite duplication, it's strangely refreshing. If only they weren't such awful snobs about it."

"Speaking of things artistic," said Miles, "you said you had some luck identifying that icon?"

"Yes." Her gaze flicked up to fix on his face. "Where did you say you saw it, Lord Vorkosigan?"

"I didn't."

"Hm." She half-smiled, but apparently decided not to fence with him over the point just now. "It is the seal of the Star Crèche, and not something I'd expect an outlander to run across every day. In fact, it's not something I'd expect an outlander to run across any day. It's most private."

Check. "And hautish?"

"Supremely."

"And, um . . . just what is the Star Crèche?"

"You don't know?" Maz seemed a little surprised. "Well, I suppose you fellows have spent all your time studying Cetagandan military matters."

"A great deal of time, yes," Ivan sighed.

"The Star Crèche is the private name of the haut-race's gene bank."

"Oh, that. I was dimly aware of—do they keep backup copies of themselves, then?" Miles asked.

"The Star Crèche is far more than that. Among the haut, they don't deal directly with each other to have egg and sperm united and the resulting embryo deposited in a uterine replicator, the way normal people do. Every genetic cross is negotiated and a contract drawn between the heads of the two genetic lines—the Cetagandans call them constellations, though I suppose you Barrayarans would call them clans. That contract in turn must be approved by the Emperor, or rather, by the senior female in the Emperor's line, and marked by the seal of the Star Crèche. For the last half-century, since the present regime began, that senior female has been haut Lisbet Degtiar, the Emperor's mother. It's not just a formality, either. Any genetic alterations—and the haut do a lot of them—have to be examined and cleared by the Empress's board of geneticists, before they are allowed into the haut genome. You asked me if the haut-women had any power. The Dowager Empress had final approval or veto over every haut birth."

"Can the Emperor override her?"

Maz pursed her lips. "I truly don't know. The haut are incredibly reserved about all this. If there are any behind-the-scenes power struggles, the news certainly doesn't leak out past the Celestial Garden's gates. I do know I've never heard of such a conflict."

"So . . . who is the new senior female? Who inherits the seal?"

"Ah! Now you've touched on something interesting." Maz was warming to her subject. "Nobody knows, or