Miles appointed acting Imperial Auditor to investigate the Illyan affair

Miles Vorkosigan’s appointment as acting Imperial Auditor turns his concern for Simon Illyan into an investigation with authority to penetrate ImpSec’s chain of command. The appointment answers Miles’s insistence that he must see the raw evidence for himself, but it also gives him a defined public duty: to investigate Illyan’s breakdown as an independent observer, under limits set by Gregor.

Causes and Background

Miles’s request grows from repeated attempts to reach Illyan and his fear that the chief is being left alone inside a crisis of memory and identity. Lucas Haroche has blocked him twice and threatened to have him stunned if he persisted. Miles believes Haroche may be mishandling the situation through nervousness and inexperience; he also cannot dismiss deliberate sabotage. He does not claim to know which explanation is true. The uncertainty itself is what makes access to the evidence urgent.

Miles’s own experience of cryo-amnesia gives that concern a personal dimension. He recalls how isolating it was to lose himself inside his own mind and says that no one came for him until Mark forced his way through. That memory does not prove what is happening to Illyan, but it helps explain why Miles refuses to treat the matter as a routine internal problem. His appeal to Gregor is also carefully distinguished from an ex-subordinate’s request: he invokes a Vor obligation as his father’s son, one that bypasses ImpSec’s military hierarchy.

The Request for Oversight

Miles asks for more than permission to visit Illyan. He wants to review every scrap of raw evidence connected with the case, medical or otherwise, and to exercise oversight. Calling Gregor repeatedly for support would not provide the standing he needs; Lucas Haroche, Miles expects, will resist informal intervention. Instead, Miles asks Gregor to assign him an Imperial Auditor, an office whose legal authority would require ImpSec to hand over material it might otherwise withhold.

Miles understands the practical force of that office: an Auditor can requisition anything, and the institution must comply. The authority is not merely a personal favor from the Emperor; it is a formal means of making a resistant agency answer. Miles admits that he does not yet know what the investigation will uncover. He can only say that the case has a wrong shape, and that its explanation may prove trivial or serious. His request is therefore for the means to investigate, not for confirmation of a theory he already holds.

Gregor’s Appointment and Its Limits

Gregor sees that Miles is not really seeking an Auditor to supervise him. He predicts that Miles would soon return asking for a second Auditor to keep the first under control. What Miles wants, Gregor concludes, is an Auditor-shaped shield that lets him conduct his own investigation. Gregor explains that an Auditor serves as the Emperor’s eyes and ears: a listener and independent probe able to go where the Emperor cannot. Miles’s independence, rather than conventional obedience to the hierarchy, is the reason Gregor chooses him.

Gregor appoints Miles acting Imperial Auditor to evaluate Illyan’s breakdown. The assignment comes with the usual broad limits associated with a Ninth Auditor’s powers: Miles’s actions must remain at least dimly related to the matter he has been assigned, and he cannot order executions. If he directs arrests, Gregor expects them to rest on enough evidence to support successful prosecution. He also insists on traditional decorum and due care. The appointment thus grants unusual reach without making Miles’s authority unlimited.

Miles accepts the charge. Gregor’s response to the prospect that Lucas Haroche might dismiss the appointment as a scam is firm: Haroche would be dangerously mistaken. The exchange makes the office’s political force plain. Gregor is not simply endorsing Miles’s suspicions; he is deliberately creating a legitimate route around the barriers that have prevented Miles from examining the case.

Authority Put to Work

The appointment is marked by both its symbols and its practical instruments. Gregor sends his majordomo to the Residence vault for an Auditor’s chain of office and the electronic seal that carries the office’s actual authority. Miles remarks that an Auditor’s first visit is traditionally unannounced, anticipating the investigative advantage of arriving without warning. The chain signifies the role; the seal enables its demands to be enforced.

The subsequent inquiry includes work that Miles recognizes ImpSec can perform more efficiently than he can. When Lucas Haroche proposes tracing the laboratory and timing behind the suspected biological material, including possible sources connected to Jackson’s Whole or Escobar, Miles approves the request. He also accepts a review of Illyan’s movements over a period of weeks. A real Auditor would normally have staff to delegate such tasks; lacking that staff, Miles expects to check the reports himself. His new authority therefore does not remove the labor of investigation. It gives him access and leverage while leaving him responsible for judging what the resulting records mean.

Later disclosures show how much the investigation intersects with Haroche’s own interests. Haroche has obtained Miles’s neurological medical reports and raises the possibility of a future tied to Miles’s seizure treatment. In a later confrontation, Miles reveals that Haroche offered him a return to the Dendarii on better terms than before, including a captaincy. These episodes extend the conflict beyond access to Illyan’s case: the investigation brings Miles into contact with private medical information and an offer that could pull him back toward his former military life.

Significance

The appointment changes Miles’s position from a former subordinate demanding access into an investigator empowered to require it. Its central tension is built into Gregor’s choice: Miles is useful precisely because he does not approach the case as a predictable instrument of the existing hierarchy, yet his powers remain bounded by the assignment and by standards of evidence and conduct. Gregor supplies formal authority; Miles supplies the independent scrutiny that authority is meant to make possible.

The decision does not settle whether Illyan’s breakdown results from incompetence, sabotage, or another cause. Instead, it establishes the conditions under which those possibilities can be examined. That distinction preserves the event’s investigative purpose: Miles receives not a verdict, but the right and responsibility to find out what happened.