Miles, Mystery & Mayhem - Lois McMaster Bujold [87]
He felt his underlying assumptions slowly wringing inside-out. Rian seemed less and less like a damsel in distress all the time. In fact, he was beginning to wonder if he was trying to rescue the dragon. Well, dragons need to be rescued too, sometimes. . . . Nobody even blinked at his description of his near-assassination the day before. If anything, there was a subliminal murmur of appreciation for its elegance of form and style, and of faintly sympathetic disappointment at its foiling. The judges had no appreciation for the governor's originality in attempting to muscle in on their own territory, though. The Sigma and Xi Cetan consorts looked increasingly stony, exchanging a raised-brow glance or a nod of understanding now and then.
There was a long silence when he'd finished. Time to present Plan B? "I have a suggestion," Miles said boldly. "Recall all the duplicate gene banks from the satrap governors' ships. If they are all returned, you will have stripped him of his ability to carry out his larger plans. If he resists releasing it, you will have smoked him out."
"Bring them back," said the haut Pel in dismay. "Do you have any idea how much trouble we had getting them up there?"
"But he might take both bank and Key, and flee," objected the brown-curled Consort of Rho Ceta.
"No," said Miles. "That's the one thing he can't do. There are too many Imperially guarded wormhole jumps between him and home. Speaking militarily, open flight is impossible. He'd never make it. He cannot reveal a thing about any of this till he's safely in orbit around . . . Something Ceta. In a weird way, we have him cornered till the funeral is over." Which will be all too soon, now.
"That still leaves the problem of retrieving the real Key," said Rian.
"Once you have the bank back, you may be able to negotiate the Key's return, in exchange for, say, amnesty. Or you can claim he stole it—perfectly true—and set your own security to get it back for you. Once the other governors are freed of the incriminating evidence they're holding, you may be able to cut him out of the herd, so to speak, with their goodwill. In any case, it will open up a lot of tactical options."
"He may threaten to destroy it," worried the Consort of Sigma Ceta.
"You must know Ilsum Kety better than anyone else here, haut Nadina," said Miles. "Would he?"
"He is . . . an erratic young man," she said reluctantly. "I am not yet convinced that he is guilty. But I know nothing about him that makes your accusations impossible."
"And your governor, ma'am?" Miles nodded to the Consort of Xi Ceta.
"Prince Slyke is . . . a determined and brilliant man. The plot you describe is not beyond his capacities. I'm . . . not sure."
"Well . . . you can re-create the Great Key, eventually, can't you?" Push or shove, the Empress's great plan would be canned for a generation. A very desirable outcome, from Barrayar's point of view. Miles smiled agreeably.
A faint groan went around the room. "Recovering the Great Key undamaged is the highest priority," Rian said firmly.
"He still wants to frame Barrayar," said Miles. "It may have started as cold-blooded astro-political calculation, but I'm pretty sure it's a personal motivation by now."
"If I recall the banks," said Rian slowly, "we will entirely lose this opportunity to distribute them."
The Consort of Sigma Ceta, the silver-haired Nadina, sighed, "I had hoped to live to see the Celestial Lady's vision of new growth carried out. She was right, you know. I have seen the stagnation increasing in my lifetime."
"Other opportunities will come," said another silver-haired lady.
"It must be done more carefully next time," said the brown-curled Consort of Rho Ceta. "Our Lady trusted the governors too much."
"I'm not so sure she did," said Rian. "I was only attempting to go as far as distributing inactive copies for backup. The Ba Lura felt our Mistress's desires keenly, but did not understand her subtlety. It wasn't