The former occupant of this post, whom Miles had once met, had made it plain that outlander barbarians were barely to be tolerated, but this man swept a low and apparently sincere bow, his hands pressed formally together in front of his chest. Miles blinked, startled, for the gesture more resembled the bow of a ba to a haut than the nod of a haut to an outlander.
“Lord Vorkosigan. Lady Vorkosigan. Portmaster Thorne. Nicol of the Quaddies. Armsman Roic of Barrayar. Welcome to Rho Ceta. My household is at your service.”
They all returned suitably civil murmurs of thanks. Miles considered the wording—my household , not my government , and was reminded that what he was seeing tonight was a private ceremony. The haut governor was momentarily distracted by the lights on the horizon of a shuttle dropping from orbit, his lips parting at he peered up into the glowing night sky, but the craft banked disappointingly away toward the opposite side of the city. The governor turned back, frowning.
A few minutes of polite small talk between the haut governor and Benin—formal wishes for the continued health of the Cetagandan emperor and his empresses, and somewhat more spontaneous-sounding inquiries after mutual acquaintances—was broken off again as another shuttle's lights appeared in the wide predawn dark. The governor swung around to stare again. Miles glanced back over the silent crowd of haut men and haut lady bubbles scattered like white flower petals across the bowl of the hillside. They emitted no cries, they scarcely seemed to move, but Miles felt rather than heard a sigh ripple across their ranks, and the tension of their anticipation tighten.
This time, the shuttle grew larger, its lights brightening as it boomed down across the lake, which foamed in its path. Roic stepped back nervously, then forward again nearer to Miles and Ekaterin, watching the bulk of it loom almost above them. Lights on its sides picked out upon the fuselage a screaming-bird pattern, enameled red, that glowed like flame. The craft landed on its extended feet as softly as a cat, and settled, the chinks and clinks of its heated sides contracting sounding loud in the breathless, waiting stillness.
“Time to stand up,” Miles whispered to Ekaterin, and grounded his floater. She and Roic helped hoist him out of it to his feet, and step forward to stand at attention. The close-cut grass, beneath his booted soles, felt like thick fine carpeting; its scent was damp and mossy.
A wide cargo hatch opened, and a ramp extended itself, illuminated from beneath in a pale, diffuse glow. First down it drifted a haut lady bubble—its force field not opaque, as the others, but transparent as gauze. Within, its float chair could be seen to be empty.
Miles murmured to Ekaterin, “Where's Pel? Thought this was all her . . . baby.”
“It's for the Consort of Rho Ceta who was lost with the hijacked ship,” she whispered back. “The haut Pel will be next, as she conducts the children in the dead consort's place.”
Miles had met the murdered woman, briefly, a decade ago. To his regret, he could remember little more of her now than a cloud of chocolate-brown hair that had tumbled down about her, stunning beauty camouflaged in an array of other haut women of equal splendor, and a ferocious commitment to her duties. But the float chair seemed suddenly even emptier.
Another bubble followed, and yet more, and ghem-women and ba servitors. The second bubble drew up beside the haut governor's group, grew transparent, and then winked out. Pel in her white robes sat regally in her float chair.
“Ghem-General Benin, as you are charged, please convey now the thanks of Emperor the haut Fletchir Giaja to these outlanders who have brought our Constellations' hopes home to us.”
She spoke in a normal tone, and Miles didn't see the voice pickups, but a faint echo back from the grassy bowl told him their words were being conveyed to all assembled here.
Benin called Bel forward; with formal words of ceremony, he presented a high Cetagandan honor to the Betan, a paper bound in ribbon, written in the Emperor's Own Hand, with the odd name of the Warrant of the Celestial House. Miles knew Cetagandan ghem-lords who would have traded their own mothers to be enrolled on the year's Warrant List, except that it wasn't nearly that easy to qualify. Bel dipped its floater for Benin to press the beribboned roll into its hands, and though its eyes were bright with irony, murmured thanks to the distant Fletchir Giaja in return, and kept its sense of humor, for once, under full control. It probably helped that the herm was still so exhausted it could barely hold its head upright, a circumstance for which Miles had not expected to be grateful.
Miles blinked, and suppressed a huge grin, when Ekaterin was next called forward by ghem-General Benin and bestowed with a like beribboned honor. Her obvious pleasure was not without its edge of irony either, but she returned an elegantly worded thank you.
“My Lord Vorkosigan,” Benin spoke.
Miles stepped forward a trifle apprehensively.
“My Imperial Master, the Emperor the haut Fletchir Giaja, reminds me that true delicacy in the giving of gifts considers the tastes of the recipient. He therefore charges me only to convey to you his personal thanks, in his own Breath and Voice.”
First prize, the Cetagandan Order of Merit, and what an embarrassment that medal had been, a decade ago. Second prize, two Cetagandan Orders of Merit? Evidently not. Miles breathed a sigh of relief, only slightly tinged with regret. “Tell your Imperial Master from me that he is entirely welcome.”
“My Imperial Mistress, the Empress the haut Rian Degtiar, Handmaiden of the Star Cr?che, also charged me to convey to you her own thanks, in her own Breath and Voice.”
Miles bowed perceptibly lower. “I am at her service in this.”
Benin stepped back; the haut Pel moved forward. “Indeed. Lord Miles Naismith Vorkosigan of Barrayar, the Star Cr?che calls you up.”
He'd been warned about this, and talked it over with Ekaterin. As a practical matter, there was no point in refusing the honor; the Star Cr?che had to have about a kilo of his flesh on private file already, collected not only during his treatment here, but from his memorable visit to Eta Ceta all those years back. So with only a slight tightening of his stomach, he stepped forward, and permitted a ba servitor to roll back his sleeve and present the tray with the gleaming sampling needle to the haut Pel.
Pel's own white, long-fingered hand drove the sampling needle into the fleshy part of his forearm. It was so fine, its bite scarcely pained him; when she withdrew it, barely a drop of blood formed on his skin, to be wiped away by the servitor. She laid the needle into its own freezer case, held it high for a moment of public display and declaration, closed it, and set it away in a compartment in the arm of her float chair. The faint murmur from the throng in the amphitheater did not seem to be outrage, though there was, perhaps, a tinge of amazement. The highest honor any Cetagandan could achieve, higher even than the bestowal of a haut bride, was to have his or her genome formally taken up into the Star Cr?che's banks—for disassembly, close examination, and possible selective insertion of the approved bits into the haut race's next generation.
Miles, rolling his sleeve back down, muttered to Pel, “It's prob'ly nurture, not nature, y'know.”
Her exquisite lips resisted an upward crook to form the silent syllable, Sh .
The spark of dark humor in her eye was veiled again as if seen through the morning mist as she reactivated her force shield. The sky to the east, across the lake and beyond the next range of hills, was turning pale. Coils of fog curled across the waters of the lake, its smooth surface growing steel gray in reflection of the predawn luminescence.
A deeper hush fell across the gathering of haut as through the shuttle's door and down its ramp floated array after array of replicator racks, guided by the ghem-women and ba servitors. Constellation by constellation, the haut were called forth by the acting consort, Pel, to receive their replicators. The Governor of Rho Ceta left the little group of visiting dignitaries/heroes to join with his clan, as well, and Miles realized that his humble bow, earlier, had not been any kind of irony after all. The white-clad crowd assembled were not the whole of the haut race residing on Rho Ceta, just the fraction whose genetic crosses, arranged by their clan heads, bore fruit this day, this year.