"In their defense, they don't seem to have succeeded in killing anyone, this round.  If not for lack of trying.  I actually feel I owe them—they opened up my case for me in ways I'd have had trouble finding on my own, although I suppose the Komarr scam part would have run on rails regardless.  Anyway, after I broke away from them I ended up lost in the Cryocombs . . ."

That part held her nicely spellbound.  Miles had the mother-wit to save most of his embroidering for after Jin had joined his tale, which drew her in fully.  She had less trouble following the explanation of Suze's schemes than Miles had, first encounter.

"But why was Jin here?" she asked, at a loss.  "I'd left the children with my sister Lorna.  I only thought I'd be gone overnight, maybe a day or two, until I could get a lawyer—eighteen months?"

"Do you remember being taken to be frozen?  Who did it?"

Her brow furrowed in an effort of recall.  "I was in what was supposed to have been a temporary cell, more of a room, really, at the municipal police station.  A man came in.  I thought he might be from my lawyer.  There was a hypospray, then . . ."  She shook her head, then winced.  Post-revival headache, no doubt.  His had been a doozy.

Hypnotic or knock-out drug, it hardly mattered which she had received.  Miles suspected that not even more time to overcome any lingering cryo-amnesia—of which she showed very few signs—would recover anything after that.

"After you were illegally, or in any case extra-legally, frozen, your sister and brother-in-law naturally looked after their nephew and niece.  I gather that Jin ran away from your sister due to conflicts over his creatures in her crowded household.  Mina stayed on.  She was doing well in her second year of primary school"—that seemed a safe assumption—"until I inadvertently caused Jin to be returned to his aunt, and they both ran away together to, well, me."  At her Why you? look, he added, "Jin can tell you all the details when you see him."  Miles hoped Jin was enough of a Barrayaran partisan by now to convey the Lord Auditor's good intentions.  Good performance was still to be tested, unfortunately.

"But enough about me."  Let's talk about you.  It had been a very long time, thankfully, since Miles had attempted to pick up a woman in a bar—and even that had been in the line of duty—but his sense of desperate seduction wasn't altogether misplaced.  He needed to persuade Lisa Sato to trust him, and quickly.  "What was your connection with Seiichiro Leiber, and how did it come about?"

For a long moment he feared she was going to clam up again, but after another cool look, she began, "Seiichiro came to us—to our political action council—with a secret he'd discovered through his work."

"How many times did he visit you?"

"Two or three."