The bruised civilian interrupted, pointing at Elena. "Screw him!
This woman assaulted me! There were a dozen witnesses. Damn it, I
want her charged. She's vicious."
Elena had her hands over her ears again, lower lip stuck out but
trembling slightly. Miles began to get the picture. "Did you hit him?"
She nodded. "But he said the most horrible thing to me. . . ."
"My lord," said Bothari reproachfully, "it was very wrong of you to leave her alone in this place—"
The security woman began again. "Pilot Officer Mayhew, you have a right—"
"I think she cracked the orbit of my eye," moaned the bruised man.
"I'm going to sue . . ."
Miles shot Elena a special reassuring smile. "Don't worry, I'll take care of it."
"You have a right—" yelled the security woman.
"I beg your pardon, Officer Brownell," Miles interrupted her smoothly. "Pilot Officer Mayhew is now my liegeman. As his liege commander, any charges against him must be addressed to me. It will then be my duty to determine their validity and issue the orders for the appropriate punishments. He has no rights but the right to accept
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challenge in single combat for certain categories of slander which are a bit complicated to go into now—" Obsolete, too, since dueling was outlawed by Imperial edict, but these Betans won't know the
difference—"So unless you happen to be carrying two pairs of swords and are prepared to, say, offer an insult to Pilot Officer Mayhew's mother, you will simply have to—ah—contain yourself."
Timely advice; the security woman looked as if she were about to
explode. Mayhew gave a hopeful nod, smiling weakly. Bothari stirred uneasily, eyes flicking on an inventory of men and weapons in the
mob. Gently, thought Miles; let's take it gently. "Get up, Arde. . . ."
It took some persuading, but the security officer finally checked
with her superiors about Miles's bizarre defense of Pilot Officer
Mayhew. At that point, as Miles had hoped and foreseen, proceedings broke down in a morass of untested interplanetary legal hypotheses
that threatened to engulf the Barrayaran Embassy and the Betan State Department on ever-ascending levels of personnel.
Elena's case was easier. The outraged Betan was directed to take
his case to the Barrayaran Embassy in person. There, Miles knew, it would be swallowed up in an endless möbius loop of files, forms, and reports, kept especially for such occasions by the extremely
competent staff. The forms included some particularly creative ones that had to be round-tripped on the six-week journey back to Barrayar itself, and were guaranteed to be sent back several times for minor errors in execution.
"Relax," Miles whispered in an aside to Elena. "They'll bury that guy in files so deep you'll never see him again. It works great with Betans—they're perfectly happy, because all the time they think