"I've always found enough."  A dozen times over, Miles's life had been handed back to him by people he barely knew.  "I figure it gives me an obligation to take my turn being one."

"Huh," said Suze.

"Jinni and Lucky both like him," Jin testified in anxious aid.

Thin lips quirked.  "Oh, well, if the rat and the cat both agree, who am I to argue . . . ?"  After another moment, the door swung open, and Jin shooed him in.

Suze might have been any age from a hard-worn eighty to a well-preserved century.  She had certainly, Miles thought, been a head taller a couple of decades back; now she would need sturdy shoes to top five feet, but instead wore flat plastic sandals that snapped her dry-skinned heels as she stepped.  That head was covered with frizzed and unruly gray curls.  She might have seemed younger if she'd smiled, but the frown grooves were deeply set around her pursed mouth.  Her loose trousers, shirt, and over-shirt were not a set, but being black, black, and black, they could not mismatch.

Her quarters consisted of two rooms.  An antechamber filled with much the same sort of junk storage Miles had glimpsed below-stairs might once have been the domain of some receptionist.  The room beyond, a generous corner office with windows on two sides, had surely been executive territory.  A rumpled bedroll lay along one inner wall; he spied the comconsole, with desk and chair, along the other.  A battered table held a ewer and washbasin, damp towels, and a faint scent of soap competing with the close, old-woman air of the place.  The tall storage cupboard, doors shut, might have held anything.  A couple of spare swivel chairs, a couch leaking stuffing, and two armchairs, all used office furniture, suggested that Suze might not be as reclusive as she looked.

Suze gestured him to the comconsole.  "It's open."

"Thank you, ma'am," Miles said, sliding into the station chair.  Suze and Jin watched over his shoulder.  Finding the local news feeds took only moments.  He selected Nexus standard English from a menu of some dozen supported local language options, half of which he could not identify.  Although Barrayaran Russian was most certainly not among them, which might come in handy should he need private speech with his bodyguard—if Roic was still alive . . .

As he'd suspected, yesterday morning's uproar at the cryo-conference was well covered.  The vid commentary, as usual, was cursory and not too informative, but the detail supplements proved more useful; they included a complete list of the kidnapped, with pictures, and pleas from the local authorities for anyone with information to step forward.  Roic and Miles were both on the list, as was Dr. Durona, unfortunately.  Two different extremist organizations, neither of which Miles had previously heard of—so much for his ImpSec reports on Kibou-daini—were claiming credit, or blame, for the kidnappings.