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The youngest suspect, the haut Ilsum Kety, governor of Sigma Ceta, was a mere stripling of forty-five or so. In body type he was much like Slyke Giaja, who was in fact a cousin of his through their mothers, who were half-sisters though of different constellations. Haut family trees were even more confusing than the Vors'. It would take a full-time geneticist to keep track of all the semi-siblings.

Eight white bubbles floated into the basin, and took up an arc to the left of the circle of satrap governors. The ghem-officers took up a similar arc to the right. They, Miles realized, were going to get to stand through the entire afternoon's ceremony. Being a ghem-general wasn't all blood and beer. But could any of those bubbles be . . . ?

"Who are those ladies?" Miles asked Maz, nodding toward the octet.

"They are the satrap governors' consorts."

"I . . . thought the haut did not marry."

"There's no personal relationship implied in the title. They are appointed centrally, just like the governors themselves."

"Not by the governors? What's their function? Social secretaries?"

"Not at all. They are chosen by the empress, to be her representatives in all dealings having to do with the Star Crèche's business. All the haut living on a satrap planet send their genetic contracts through the consorts to the central gene bank here at the Celestial Garden, where the fertilizations and any genetic alterations take place. The consorts also oversee the return of the uterine replicators with the growing fetuses to their parents on the outlying planets. That has to be the strangest cargo run in the Cetagandan empire—once a year for each planet."

"Do the consorts travel back to Eta Ceta once a year, in that case, to personally accompany their charges?"

"Yes."

"Ah." Miles settled back, smiling fixedly. Now he saw how the Empress Lisbet had set up her scheme, the living channels she had used to communicate with each satrap governor. If every one of those consorts wasn't in on this plot to her eyebrows, he'd eat his boots. Sixteen. I have sixteen suspects, not eight. Oh, God. And he'd come here to cut down his list. But it followed logically that Ba Lura's murderer might not have had to borrow or steal a haut-lady's bubble. She might have owned one already. "Do the consort-ladies work closely with their satrap governors?"

Maz shrugged. "I really don't know. Not necessarily, I suppose. Their areas of responsibility are highly segregated."

A majordomo took center stage, and made a silent motion. Every voice in the dell went still. Every haut-lord dropped to his knees on padded rests thoughtfully provided in front of the benches. All the white bubbles bobbled—Miles still wondered how many of the haut-women cheated and cut corners at these ceremonies. After an anticipatory hush, the emperor himself arrived, escorted by guards in white and blood-red uniforms, zebra-faced, of terrible aspect if you took them seriously. Miles did, not for the face paint, but in certain knowledge of just how nervous and twitchy in the trigger-finger such an awesome responsibility could make a man.

It was the first time in his life Miles had seen the Cetagandan emperor in the flesh, and he studied the man as avidly as he had studied the satrap governors. Emperor the haut Fletchir Giaja was tall, lean, hawk-faced like his demi-cousins, his hair still untouched by gray despite his seventy-odd years. A survivor—he had succeeded to his rank at a fantastically young age for a Cetagandan, less than thirty, and held on through a wobbly youth to an apparently iron-secure mid-life. He seated himself with great assurance and grace of movement, serene and confident. Ringed by bowing traitors. Miles's nostrils flared, and he took a breath, dizzy with the irony. At another signal from the majordomo, everyone regained their seats, still in that remarkable silence.

The presentation of the elegiac poems in honor of the late haut Lisbet Degtiar began with the heads of the lowest-ranking constellations present.