Roic, stoutly, didn't snicker.  "The nine Imperial Auditors are actually a pretty varied lot, once you meet them.  Lord Auditor Vorthys, who's also m'lady's uncle, looks like a rumpled old engineering professor because that's exactly what he is.  There's this crusty admiral, a retired diplomat, an industrialist . . . m'lord's become more-or-less Gregor's galactic affairs expert.  The emperor's uncannily shrewd at matching his Auditors to their cases.  Although I suppose we'll have to hit a dud one of these days, he hasn't sent us off-world on a fool's errand yet."  Roic actually hoped for a dud case, someday.  It could be restful.

"That's reassuring."  Vorlynkin hesitated.  "I think."

Roic smiled crookedly at the codicil.  "Yeah."

#

Back in the consulate's tight-room, Miles saw the address code on his message and relaxed.  It looked to be the weekly report from Ekaterin, which explained why it didn't bear any of the usual urgent markers.  Something nice, amid all this muddle.  Reflecting on the difference between urgent and important, he leaned forward to let his Auditor's seal swing out on its chain, and unsealed the message.

His wife's face appeared, smiling, above the vid plate, and he paused the vid just to get a good look at her.  She sailed through her days under such a constant barrage of interruptions, lately, he hardly ever saw her holding still unless she was sleeping.  Clear blue-gray eyes raised in a candid gaze, sleek dark hair untouched by frost although she was his age plus a couple of months.  Considering that he'd stuck her with four offspring in under six years, her lack of gray hairs seemed increasingly remarkable.  They'd all been gestated in uterine replicators, but still.  He'd been an only child himself, racked from birth by medical issues now not so much solved as exchanged for new ones.  Perhaps—no, make that certainly—he'd underestimated how much work normal healthy children would take, even with all the help his money and position could buy.  For there were some tasks you didn't want to delegate, because then you'd be missing the best parts.

She was actually staring at a vid pickup, not at him, he reminded himself, but under the weight of her faintly ironic look he set her back in motion, irrationally guilty at delaying her.

"Greetings, my love," she said.  "We've received your latest here with much relief and rejoicing, though fortunately I didn't tell the children about that first alarming message before the second had overtaken it.  I shudder to think what your parents went through during your old career.  Though I suppose your father kept his high-Vor upper lip suitably stiff, and your mother, well, I can scarcely imagine.  Said tart Betan things, I suppose."