Diplomatic Immunity by Lois McMaster Bujold Read Free Book Online Page A

looking a bit like flowers on stalks, which provided suitably spaced tethering points. Miles picked a post with his back to open space. Ekaterin floated over and took up a spot a little behind him. She'd gone into her silent, highly reserved mode, which Miles had to school himself not to read as unhappy; it might just mean that she was processing too hard to remember to be animated. Fortunately, the ivory-carved expression also simulated aristocratic poise.
    A pair of younger quaddies, whose green shirt-and-shorts garb Miles's eye decoded as servitor , offered drink bulbs all around; Miles selected something billed to be tea, Ekaterin took fruit juice, and Roic, with a glance at his quaddie opposite numbers who were offered none, declined. A quaddie could grip a handhold and a drink bulb, and still have two hands left to draw and aim a weapon. It hardly seemed fair.
    "Senior Sealer Greenlaw," Miles began. "My credentials, you should have received." She nodded, her short, fine hair floating in a wispy halo with the motion. He continued, "I am, unfortunately, not wholly familiar with the cultural context and meaning of your title. Who do you speak for, and do your words bind them in honor? That is to say, do you represent Graf Station, a department within the Union of Free Habitats, or some larger entity still? And who reviews your recommendations or sanctions your agreements?" And how long does it usually take them?  
    She hesitated, and he wondered if she was studying him with the same intensity that he studied her. Quaddies were even longer-lived than Betans, who routinely made it to one-hundred-and-twenty standard, and might expect to see a century and a half; how old was this woman?
    "I am a Sealer for the Union's Department of Downsider Relations; I believe some downsider cultures would term this a minister plenipotentiary for their state department, or whatever body administers their embassies. I've served the department for the past forty years, including tours as junior and senior counsel for the Union in both our bordering systems."
    The near neighbors to Quaddiespace, a few jumps away on heavily used routes; she was saying she'd spent time on planets. And, incidentally, that she's been doing this job since before I was born . If only she wasn't one of those people who figured that if you'd seen one planet, you'd seen 'em all, this sounded promising. Miles nodded.
    "My recommendations and agreements will be reviewed by my work gang on Union Station—which is the Board of Directors of the Union of Free Habitats."
    Well, so there was a committee, but happily, they weren't here. Miles pegged her as being roughly the equivalent of a senior Barrayaran minister in the Council of Ministers, well up to his own weight as an Imperial Auditor. Granted, the quaddies had nothing in their governmental structure equivalent to a Barrayaran Count, though they seemed none the worse for the deprivation—Miles suppressed a dry snort. One layer from the top, Greenlaw had a finite number of persons to please or persuade. He permitted himself his first faint hope for a reasonably supple negotiation.
    Her white brows drew in. "They called you the Emperor's Voice. Do Barrayarans really believe their emperor's voice comes from your mouth, across all those light-years?"
    Miles regretted his inability to lean back in a chair; he straightened his spine a trifle instead. "The name is a legal fiction, not a superstition, if that's what you're asking. Actually, Emperor's Voice is a nickname for my job. My real title is Imperial Auditor—a reminder that always my first task is to listen. I answer to—and for—Emperor Gregor alone." This seemed a good place to leave out such complications as potential impeachment by the Council of Counts, and other Barrayaran-style checks and balances. Such as assassination.  
    The security officer, Venn, spoke up. "So do you, or do you not, control the Barrayaran military forces here in Union space?" He'd