"Um, yes, sir."
The problem had occurred on Jin's way back, then. Not good… Miles had waited in growing anxiety till midnight, then pressed Ako into substitute pet care and taken matters unto his own hands, or feet. The hours it had cost him to make it here unobserved had not improved his mood. Neither had the rain.
The consul's brows drew down as he took in Miles's appearance in turn, a very far cry from Miles's cultivated gray-eminence-look of their brief meeting last week. Although the ragged, stained clothing, two-day growth of face stubble, general reek, and peculiar shoes might not be the whole of why he flinched. But, showing a keen eye that was well-placed in the diplomatic corps, he caught Miles's gaze tracking his waving mug, and added smoothly, "Do you want to come to the kitchen and sit down, my Lord Auditor? We were just having breakfast."
"Tea, yes," said Miles, relieved from his impulse to wrench the mug out of the man's hand. Gods, yes.
Vorlynkin led through the back archway, saying, "How did you get here?"
"Walked. Thirty-odd kilometers since midnight, back ways, dodging twice because I didn't want to explain myself in my current condition to the local street guards. Needless to say, this was not my original plan."
The kitchen was a modest tidy room, with a round dining table squeezed into a sort of bay overlooking the walled back garden. The windows mostly reflected the room's bright interior, but beyond, the night's damp blackness was turning to bluer shadow. The blond kid, the attache Johannes, turned from the microwave and almost dropped whatever pre-packaged bachelor fare he'd just heated. At his boss's head-jerk, he hastened to pull out a chair for the very important, if very unkempt, visitor. Miles fell into it, trying not to let his gratitude overcome his exasperation, because the latter was about all that was keeping him functional.
"Can I get you something, my lord?" asked the lieutenant solicitously.
"Tea. Also a shower, dry clothes, food, sleep, and a secured comconsole, though I'd settle for just the comconsole, but let's start with the tea." Or else he risked pillowing his head on his arms and going for the sleep first, right here. "Did you get my don't-panic message off to Barrayar, and my wife? Coded, I trust?"
Vorlynkin said, a little stiffly, "We notified ImpSec Galactic Affairs on Komarr that we'd heard from you, and that you were not in the hands of the kidnappers."
"Good enough. I'll send my own update in a bit." Miles trusted it would overtake any word anyone had been maladroit enough to hand on to Ekaterin, or he'd have some groveling to do when he got home. "Meanwhile, I've had no news since yesterday. Have you heard more on the hostages taken from the cryo-conference? Anything on Armsman Roic?"
Vorlynkin slid into his chair a quarter-wedge around the table from Miles. "Good news there, sir. Your Armsman managed to escape his captors long enough to reach a comlink of some sort and call the Northbridge authorities. The police rescue team reached them not long ago-we've been up all night following developments. It seems everyone was freed alive. I don't know how long it will take him to get back-he said he had to stay till he'd given his testimony.
"Ah, yes. Roic has a deal more sympathy for police procedure than I do." Miles took his first swallow of hot tea with profound relief. "And the boy-wait. And who might you be?" Miles eyed Yuuichi, who had taken refuge with Johannes on the far side of the kitchen.
"This is our consulate clerk, Yuuichi Matson," Vorkynkin put in. "Our most valuable employee. He's been here about five years." The clerk cast his boss a grateful look and slanted Miles a civil bow.
The consulate's only employee, actually. And since Vorlynkin had been here two years, and Johannes had only arrived last year, Matson was also the oldest, in time of service if not age. Who do you trust, my Lord Auditor? In a situation like this, no one but Roic, Miles supposed, but misplaced paranoia could be as great a mistake as misplaced faith. Careful, then, but not bloody paralyzed. "So what happened to Jin?"
"We dispatched him back to you exactly as you directed, my lord. We did take the precaution of placing a microscopic ping tracer in the envelope, however."
Not exactly the don't follow him that Miles had written, but it would be hypocritical to quibble over fine points now. Results, after all.
"By early evening, the envelope had come to rest in what we think is the evidence room of the Northbridge central police station-it's in that building, anyway. The boy Jin, after apparently passing through the hands of the police, ended up at the juvenile detention center, where he's been all night. With that much to go on, Lieutenant Johannes was able to access the public arrest records for yesterday, and identify him by process of elimination. It seems the boy's full name is Jin Sato, and he's a runaway who's been missing for over a year!"
"Yes?" said Miles. "I knew that."
Vorlynkin's diplomatic tones grew notably strained. "How the devil-sir!-did you come to involve a child like that in your affairs-whatever they are?"
"He's eleven," said Miles.
"Eleven! Worse and worse!"
"When my father was eleven," said Miles reasonably, "he became aide-de-camp to the general-my-grandfather in a full-scale civil war. By age thirteen he'd helped to bring down an emperor. I didn't figure an afternoon's jaunt across his home town and back-on a peaceful planet at that-to be beyond Jin's capacity." Yet apparently, he'd figured wrong. Miles winced inside. He hadn't thought through the implications of Jin's runaway status in a heavily monitored place like this, even while picking his own route to avoid notice as a matter of routine. The boy would be frantic for his animals by now, and that was the least of it. "My mistake to fix, then. I don't abandon my people if I can help it. We'll just have to retrieve him."
Vorlynkin's jaw dropped. "He's a minor child. How? We have no rights to him!"
"He was carrying all our petty cash, too," put in Johannes. "I'd have gone after that myself, but I had no way to prove it was ours." He frowned at Miles, the exactly as you directed complaint implied.
Well, there's always your ping tracer, but before Miles could voice the thought, Vorlynkin went on.
"If your underage courier talks, I expect the Northbridge police will be calling us. With some very hard-to-answer questions."
Miles paused, alert. "Have they?"
"No. Not yet."
And if they didn't call, it would imply Jin had kept his mouth shut, and under conditions that had to be quite frightening to him. "That's…?interesting."
"Where did you pick up that boy, my lord?" said Vorlynkin.
"Actually, he found me. On the street, more or less." Miles did some rapid internal editing. He had, after all, given Suze his tacit word not to reveal her lair in exchange for information, and he had certainly received information, even if he wasn't sure what he wanted to do with it yet. "You read my note to you, right?"
Vorlynkin nodded.
"Well, as I said, the drug the kidnappers tried to sedate me with triggered manic hallucinations instead, and I ended up lost in the Cryocombs." No need to say for how long; the situation was certainly elastic enough to cover the missing day he'd spent with Jin and company. "When I came to my senses and found my way out, I was still a bit paranoid about my kidnappers finding me again, and too exhausted to go on. Jin kindly helped me, and I owe him."
Vorlynkin stared at Miles very hard. "Are you saying you weren't in your right mind?"
"That might actually be a good explanation, should one be needed. Does this consulate keep a local lawyer?"
"On retainer, yes."
Standard practice. Can you trust him or her to keep our secrets? was a question Miles wasn't ready to ask out loud quite yet. "Good. As soon as possible, contact the lawyer and find out what we can do to get Jin back." He held out his mug for more tea; Yuuichi, the clerk, politely filled it. Miles's hand was shaking with fatigue, but he managed not to spill tea on the way to his lips. "Shower's as good as three hours of sleep. Shower first, and then the comconsole, if you please."