kiboudaini is a planet obsessed with cheating death barrayaran imperial auditor miles vorkosigan can hardly disapprovehes been cheating death his whole life on the theory that turnabout is fair play but when a kiboudaini cryocorpan immortal company whose job it is to shepherd its alltoomortal frozen patrons into an unknown futureattempts to expand its franchise into the barrayaran empire emperor gregor dispatches his top troubleshooter miles to check it outon kiboudaini miles discovers generational conflict over money and resources is heating up even as refugees displaced in time skew the meaning of generation past repair here he finds a young boy with a passion for pets and a dangerous secret a snow white trapped in an icy coffin who burns to rewrite her own tale and a mysterious crone who is the very embodiment of the warning dont mess with the secretary bribery corruption conspiracy kidnappingsomething is rotten on kiboudaini and it isnt due to power outages in the cryocombs and miles is in the middleof trouble