CHAPTER ONE

Miles returned to consciousness with his eyes still closed. His brain seemed to smolder with the confused embers of some fiery dream, formless and fading. He was shaken by a fearful conviction that he had been killed again, till memory and reason began to place this shredded experience.

His other senses tried to take inventory. He was in null-gee, his short body stretched out flat, strapped to a surface and swathed in what felt like a thin foil med wrap, standard military issue. Wounded? All limbs seemed present and accounted for. He was still wearing the soft bodysuit that had lined his now-missing space armor. The straps were not tight. The complex scent of many-times-refiltered air, cool and dry, tickled his nostrils. He secretly snaked an arm free, careful not to rattle the wrap, and touched his bare face. No control leads, no sensors—no blood—where are my armor, my weapons, my command headset?

The rescue mission had been going as smoothly as such missions ever did. He and Captain Quinn and their patrol had penetrated the hijackers' ship, found the brig. Blasted through to the captured Barrayaran ImpSec courier officer, Lieutenant Vorberg, still alive though addled with sedatives. The medtech had pronounced the hostage clear of mechanical or chemical boobytraps, and they'd begun the exhilarating trip through the dark corridors back to the waiting Dendarii combat shuttle.

The hijackers, very much occupied elsewhere, had made no attempt to jump them. What went wrong?

The sounds around him were quiet: the bleep of equipment, the hiss of atmosphere recycling on normal operation, the murmur of voices. One low animal moan. Miles licked his lips, just to be sure that noise wasn't coming from himself. He might not be wounded, but somebody nearby was not in good shape. A tangy whiff of antiseptics escaped filtration. He slitted open his eyes, prepared to play unconscious again and think fast if he found himself in enemy hands.

But he was—safely, he hoped—in his own Dendarii Fleet combat shuttle, strapped to one of the four fold-down bunks toward the rear of the fuselage. The emergency medical station was a familiar sight, though he didn't usually see it from this angle of view. Blue Squad's medtech, his back to Miles, hovered by a bunk across the aisle that held another strapped-down form. Miles couldn't see any body bags. Only one other casualty. He _t would add, Good, except that there weren't supposed to be any casualties.

Only one casualty, Miles corrected his thought. A violent headache throbbed at the base of his brain. But he bore no plasma arc burns, no nerve-disrupter paralysis. No intravenous tubing or hypospray injector pierced his body, pumping in blood replacements or synergine against shock. He did not float in a narcotic haze of painkillers, and no pressure bandages hampered his slight movements. No sense-blockers. The headache felt like a post-stun migraine. How the hell could I have been stunned through combat armor?

The Dendarii medtech, still combat-armored but with helmet and gloves off, turned and saw Miles's open eyes. "You're awake, sir? I'll notify Captain Quinn." He hovered briefly over Miles's face, and flashed a light into his eyes, doubtless checking for abnormal pupil response.

"How long . . . was I out? What happened?"

"You had some kind of seizure, or convulsion. No apparent cause. The field kit test for toxins didn't turn up anything, but its pretty basic. We'll go over you more thoroughly as soon as we're back to the ship's sick bay."

Not dead again. Worse. This is still more of the leftovers from the last time. Oh, hell. What have I done? What have they seen?

He would rather have been—well, no. He would not rather have been nerve-disrupted. But almost. "How long?" Miles repeated.

"The seizure seemed to last four or five minutes."

It had certainly taken more than five minutes to get from there to here. "Then?"

"You've been unconscious for about a half hour, I'm afraid, Admiral Naismith."

He'd never been out so long before. This was the worst attack ever, by far. He'd prayed the last one would be the last one. Over two months had passed since his previous unwitnessed, brief collapse. Dammit, he'd been certain the new medication had worked.

He made to free himself, fighting out of the heat wrap and bunk straps.

"Please don't try to get up, Admiral."

"I have to go forward and get reports."

The medtech placed a cautious hand upon his chest, and pressed him back onto the bunk. "Captain Quinn ordered me to sedate you if you tried to get up. Sir."

Miles almost barked, And I countermand that order! But they did not seem to be in the midst of combat now, and the tech had a medically steely look in his eye, of a man prepared to do his duty whatever the risks. Save me from the virtuous. "Is that why I was out so long? Was I sedated?"

"No, sir. I only gave you synergine. Your vital signs were stable, and I was afraid to give you anything else till I had some better idea what we were dealing with."

"What about my squad? Are we all out? The Barrayaran hostage, did we get him out all right?"

"Everybody got out all right. The Barrayaran, um . . . will live. I retrieved his legs; there's a good chance the surgeon will be able to reattach them." The medtech glanced around, as if seeking comradely assistance.

"What? How was he injured?"

"Uh . . . I'll call Captain Quinn for you, sir."

"You do that," growled Miles.

The medtech ducked away into free fall, and murmured urgently into an intercom on the far wall. He returned to his patient—Lieutenant Vorberg? IVs were pumping plasma and medications into the man through sites on both an arm and his neck. The rest was concealed by heat foil. At a light-signal from the forward bulkhead, the medtech hastily strapped himself into his station jump seat, and the shuttle went through a quick series of accelerations, decelerations, and attitude adjustments, in preparation for locking on to its mother ship.

Properly, upon docking the injured hostage was rushed out first. In two parts. Miles gritted his teeth in dismay at the sight of the soldier clutching a large cold-container who followed the medtech and float pallet. There did not seem to be much blood smeared around, though. Miles had just given up waiting for Quinn and was releasing himself from his medical restraints when she appeared from the flight deck and floated down the aisle toward him.

She had doffed the helmet and gloves from her space armor, and pulled back her bodysuits hood to free her dark, sweat-flattened curls. Her beautifully sculpted face was pale with tension, her brown eyes dark with fear. But his little three-ship fleet could be in no immediate danger, or she would be attending to it, not to him. "Are you all right?" she asked hoarsely.

"Quinn, what—no. Give me a general status report first."

"Green Squad got the hijacked ships crew out. All of them. There was a bit of equipment damage—the insurance company's not going to be as ecstatic as the last time—but our Life Bonus is safe and warm."

"Praise be to God and Sergeant Taura. And our hijackers?"

"We took their big ship and nineteen prisoners. Three enemy killed. All secured there; our prize crew is aboard cleaning up. Six or eight of the bastards escaped in their jump-pinnance. It's weak on armament—this far from the nearest jump point, the Ariel can overtake them at our leisure. Your decision, whether to stand off and blow them up, or attempt capture."

Miles rubbed his face. "Interrogate those prisoners. If this is the same bloody-handed lot that took the Solera last year, and murdered all the passengers and crew, Vega Station will pay a reward, and we can collect three times for the same mission. Since the Vegans are offering the same reward for the proof of their deaths, record everything carefully. We'll demand surrender. Once." He sighed. "I take it things did not run exactly according to plan. Again."

"Hey. Any hostage-rescue ploy that gets everyone out alive is a success by any sane standard. Assuming our fleet surgeon doesn't reattach your poor Barrayaran's legs left-to-right or backwards, this is a one-hundred-percenter."

"Er . . . yes. What happened when ... I went down? What happened to Vorberg?"

"Friendly fire, unfortunately. Though it didn't seem all that friendly at the time. You fell over—surprised the hell out of us. Your suit emitted a lot of garbage telemetry, then your plasma arc locked on." She raked her hands through her hair.

Miles glanced at the heavy-duty plasma arc built into the right arm of Quinn's space armor, twin to his own. His heart sank into his churning stomach. "Oh, no. Oh, shit. Don't tell me."

"I'm afraid so. You kneecapped your own rescuee. Neat as could be, right across both legs. Luckily—I guess—the beam cauterized as it sliced, so he didn't bleed to death. And he was so tanked on drugs, I'm not even sure he felt much. For a moment I thought some enemy had taken over remote control of your suit, but the engineers swear that isn't possible anymore. You blew out a bunch of walls—it took four of us to sit on your arm till we could take the medic's can-opener to your armor and get in and get you disconnected. You were thrashing around—you damn near took us out too. In pure desperation, I stunned you on the back of your neck, and you went limp. I was afraid I'd killed you."

Quinn was a little breathless, describing this. Her lovely face was not, after all, the original, but a replacement after her own violent encounter with plasma fire, over a decade ago. "Miles, what the hell was going on with you?"

"I think I had . . . some kind of seizure. Like epilepsy, except that it doesn't seem to leave any neurological tracks. I'm afraid it might be an aftereffect from my cryo-revival last year." You know damned well it is. He touched the twin scars on either side of his neck, now grown faint and pale, the lesser souvenirs of that event. Quinn's emergency stunner-treatment explained his lengthy bout of unconsciousness and subsequent headache. So, the seizures were no worse than before. . . .

"Oh, dear," said Quinn. "But is this the first—" She paused, and looked at him more closely. Her voice went flatter. "This isn't the first time you've done this, is it."

The silence stretched; Miles forced himself to speak before it snapped. "It happened three or four," or five "times soon after I was brought back from stasis. My cryo-revival surgeon said they might go away on their own, the way the memory loss and the shortness of breath have. And after that they seemed to stop."

"And ImpSec let you go out on a covert ops field mission with that kind of time bomb in your head?"

"ImpSec . . . does not know."

"Miles ..."

"Elli," he said desperately, "they'd pull me right off line duty, you know they would. Nail my boots to the floor behind some desk at best. Medical discharge at worst—and that would be the end of Admiral Naismith. Forever."

She froze, stricken.

"I figured if the seizures came back I'd try to solve 'em on my own. I thought I had."

"Does anybody know?"

"Not . . . very many. I didn't want to chance it getting back to ImpSec. I told the Dendarii fleet surgeon. I swore her to secrecy. We were working on a causal diagnosis. Haven't got too far yet. Her specialty's trauma, after all." Yes, like plasma arc burns, and limb reattachment. At least Lieutenant Vorberg could not be in better or more experienced hands right now, even if he could have been magically transported in an instant back to Barrayar's own Imperial Military Hospital.

Quinn's lips tightened. "But you didn't tell me. Never mind our personal relationship, I'm your second in command on this mission!"

"I should have told you. Obvious in hindsight." Blindingly.

Quinn glanced up the fuselage of the shuttle, where a medtech from the Peregrine was wrestling a float pallet in through the hatch. "I still have some mopping up to supervise. You're going to stay in the frigging sick bay till I get back, right?"

"I'm back on track now! It could be months till it happens again. If ever."

"Right?" Quinn repeated through her teeth, with an open glare at him.

He thought of Vorberg, and deflated. "Right," he muttered.

"Thank you," she hissed.

He scorned the float pallet, insisting on walking, but otherwise followed the medtech, feeling horribly subdued. I'm losing control of this. . . .

As soon as Miles arrived in sick bay, an anxious tech administered a brain scan, drew blood, took samples of every fluid his body could be made to exude, and rechecked every vital sign he possessed. After that, there was not very much to do but wait for the surgeon. Miles withdrew discreetly into a small examining room, where his batman brought him his ship uniform. The man seemed inclined to hover solicitously and Miles, irritated, sent him away.

This left Miles alone in a quiet room with nothing to do but think, possibly a tactical error. Quinn could be trusted with the mopping up, or why else had he made her his second? She had taken over competently enough the last time he had been violently removed from his chain of command, his chest blown out by that sniper's needle grenade on the mission to Jackson's Whole.

He pulled up and fastened his gray trousers, and studied his torso, his fingers tracing the wide spidery burst of scars fading on his skin. The Jacksonian cryo-revival surgeon had done a superb job. His new heart and lungs and assorted other organs were nearly fully grown now, entirely functional. With the latest additions, the brittle bones that had plagued him since his defective birth were almost completely replaced by synthetics throughout his body. The cryo-surgeon had even straightened his spine while she was at it; there was barely a hint left of the hunchback curvature that, along with his dwarfish stature, had made his fellow Barrayarans snigger Mutant! when they thought he could not hear. He'd even gained a couple more centimeters in height out of the deal, an expensive little bonus, but it mattered to him. The fatigue didn't show. To the outward eye, he was in better physical shape than he'd ever been in his nearly thirty years of life.

There's just one little hitch.

Of all the threats that had ever shadowed his hard-won career, this was the most elusive, the least expected, the most fatal. He'd worked with impassioned concentration, overcoming all doubts as to his physical disabilities, winning his way to premier status as Barrayaran Imperial Security's most creative galactic affairs agent. Where the Barrayaran Empire's regular forces could not reach, past barriers of politics and distance in the chaining network of wormhole jump routes that strung the galaxy together, a supposedly independent mercenary outfit might pop up unimpeded. Miles had spent a decade perfecting his cover identity of "Admiral Naismith," self-styled leader of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. Daring Rescues Our Specialty.

Such as the current mission. The grotty crew of hijackers had run seriously out of luck the day they'd stolen an unarmed freighter of Zoave Twilight's planetary registry, and found what they thought was the prize in the package in the form of a Barrayaran Imperial Courier, covertly transporting credit chits and vital diplomatic information. If they'd had any sense of self-preservation at all, they should have returned Lieutenant Vorberg and his packets, undamaged and unexamined, immediately to the nearest drop-point, with profuse apologies.

Instead, they'd tried to sell him to the highest bidder. Slay them all, ImpSec Chief Simon Illyan had muttered. The Devil will recognize his own. Then he'd delegated the details to Miles. The Emperor did not approve of unauthorized persons impeding his couriers. Or torturing them, or attempting to market them like high-information-density slabs of meat. This was one mission where, although the Dendarii Fleet's official sponsor was the insurance company covering the Zoave Twilight ship, it wouldn't hurt to reveal that their co-backer was the Barrayaran Empire. Good publicity, for the protection of the next courier to run into similar bad luck.

Assuming it was luck. Miles itched to go oversee the interrogation of the prisoners; Illyan's second sharpest concern after the retrieval of Vorberg alive was to determine if the courier had been kidnapped by accident or on purpose. If on purpose . . . somebody had some internal investigating to do. In all, Miles was extremely glad that sort of messy job did not fall into his area of expertise.

The surgeon, still dressed in her sterile garb, entered at last. She put her hands on her hips, stared at Miles, and sighed. She looked tired.

"How's the Barrayaran?" Miles ventured. "Will, um . . . he recover?"

"He's not too bad. The cuts were very clean, and luckily just below the knee joints, which saved a world of complications. He'll be about three centimeters shorter after this."

Miles winced.

"But he'll be on his feet by the time he gets home," she added, "assuming that takes about six weeks."

"Ah. Good." But suppose the random blare of the plasma arc had taken Vorberg through the knees. Or about a meter higher, cutting him in half. There were limits to the miracles even his Dendarii surgical expert could perform. It would not have been a career high point, after Miles had airily assured his ImpSec chief that he could rescue Vorberg with scarcely a ripple in his routine, to return him packed in a body bag. Two body bags. Miles felt faint with a weird mixture of relief and horror. Oh, God, I'm going to hate explaining this to Illyan.

The surgeon studied Miles's scans, muttering medical incantations. "We're still on baseline, here. No obvious abnormalities show up. The only way I can get any leverage into this is to have you monitored while you undergo an attack."

"Hell, I thought we did every kind of stress and electroshock and stimulus known to science, to try to trigger something in the lab. I thought the pills you gave me had brought it under control."

"The standard anticonvulsant? Were you taking it properly?" She eyed him suspiciously.

"Yes." He bit back more profane protestations. "Have you thought of something else to try?"

"No, which is why I gave you that monitor to wear around." Her glance around the examining room did not disclose the device. "Where is it?"

"In my cabin."

Her lips thinned in exasperation. "Let me guess. You weren't wearing it at the time."

"It didn't fit under my combat armor."

Her teeth clenched. "Couldn't you have at least thought to—to disable your weapons?"

"I could hardly be of use to my squad in an emergency, disarmed. I might as well have stayed aboard the Peregrine."

"You were the emergency. And you certainly should have stayed aboard the Peregrine."

Or back on Barrayar. But securing Vorberg's person had been the most critical part of the operation, and Miles was the only Dendarii officer ImpSec entrusted with the Barrayaran Imperial recognition codes. "I—" He bit his tongue on futile defenses, and started over. "You are quite correct. It won't happen again, until . . . we get this straightened out. What do we do next?"

She opened her hands. "I've run every test I know. Obviously, the anticonvulsant isn't the answer. This is some kind of idiosyncratic cryonic damage on a cellular or subcellular level. You need to get your head to the highest-powered cryo-neurology specialist you can find."

He sighed, and shrugged into his black tee shirt and gray uniform jacket. "Are we done for now? I urgently need to supervise prisoner interrogation."

"I suppose." She grimaced. "But do us all a favor. Don't go armed."

"Yes, ma'am," he said humbly, and fled.

CHAPTER TWO

Miles sat before the secured comconsole in his cabin aboard the flagship Peregrine, composing what seemed like his thousandth classified field report to the Chief of Barrayaran Imperial Security, Simon Illyan. Well, it wasn't the thousandth, that was absurd. He couldn't have averaged more than three or four missions a year, and he'd been at it less than a decade, really, since the Vervain invasion adventure had made it all official. Less than forty assignments. But he could no longer name the actual number offhand without stopping to think, and add them all up, and it wasn't an effect of lingering cryo-amnesia, either.

Keep organizing, boy. His personal synopsis needed to be no more than a brief guide to the appendices of raw data, drawn from the Dendarii Fleet's own files. Illyan's intelligence analysts liked having lots of raw data to chew upon. It kept them occupied, down in their little cubicles in the bowels of ImpSec headquarters at Vorbarr Sultana. And entertained too, Miles sometimes feared.

The Peregrine, the Ariel, and the rest of "Admiral Naismith's" select battle group now orbited the planet of Zoave Twilight. His fleet accountant had turned in a busy couple of days, settling up with the insurance company who finally had their freighter and crew back, applying for salvage fees for the hijacker's captured ships, and filing the official claims for bounty to the Vega Station Embassy. Miles entered the costs/returns spreadsheets in full into his report, as Appendix A.

The prisoners had been dumped downside, for the Vegan and Zoavan governments to divide between them—preferably in the same sense as poor Vorberg had been. The ex-hijackers were a vile crew. Miles was almost sorry the pinnace had surrendered. Appendix B was copies of the Dendarii recordings of the prisoner interrogations. The downside governments would get an edited version of these, with most of the Barrayar-specific queries and answers deleted. Lots of criminal testimony, of little direct interest to ImpSec, though the Vegans ought to be pretty excited about it.

The important thing from Illyan's point of view was that no evidence had been extracted which would indicate that the kidnapping of the Barrayaran courier was anything but an accidental side effect of the hijacking. Unless—Miles made sure to note this in his synopsis—that information had been known only to those hijackers who had been killed. Since that number included both their so-called captain and two of the higher-ranking officers, there were enough possibilities in this direction to keep Illyan's analysts earning their pay. But that lead must now be traced from the other end, through the House Hargraves representatives who had been trying to handle the sale or ransom of the courier for the hijackers. Miles hoped cordially that ImpSec would focus its best negative attentions upon the Jacksonian semicriminal Great House. Though House Hargraves's agents had been extremely, if unwittingly, useful in helping the Dendarii set up their raid.

Illyan ought to like the accountant's report. The Dendarii had not only succeeded in keeping their costs under budget this time—for a change—they had made a truly amazing profit. Illyan, who had been willing to spend Imperial marks like water on the principle of the thing, had got his courier officer retrieved effectively for free. Are we good, yes?

So—when was the so-efficient ImpSec Lieutenant Lord Miles Vorkosigan finally going to get that longed-for promotion to captain? Odd, how Miles's Barrayaran rank still seemed more real to him than his Dendarii one. True, he had proclaimed himself an admiral first and then earned it later, instead of the more normal other way around, but at this late date no one could say he had not really become what he had once pretended to be. From the galactic point of view, Admiral Naismith was solid all the way through. Everything he advertised himself as being, he really was, now. His Barrayaran identity was simply an extra dimension. An appendix?

There's no place like home.

I didn't say there was nothing better. I just said there was nothing like it.

This brought him to Appendix C, which was the Dendarii combat armor recordings of the actual penetration and hostage retrieval sequences, Sergeant Taura's Green Squad and its rescue of the freighter's crew, and his own Blue Squad and that whole . . . chain of events. In full sound and color, with all their suits' medical and communications telemetry. Morbidly, Miles ran through all the real-time records of his seizure and its unfortunate consequences. Suit #060's vid recording had some really great close-ups of Lieutenant Vorberg, shocked from his doped stupor, screaming in agony and toppling unconscious in one direction while his severed legs fell in the other. Miles found himself bent over, clutching his chest in sympathy.

This was not going to be a good time to pester Illyan for a promotion.

The convalescent Vorberg had been handed over yesterday to the Barrayaran Counsel's office on Zoave Twilight, for shipment home through normal channels. Miles was secretly grateful that his covert status had let him off the hook for going into sick bay and personally apologizing to the man. Before the plasma arc accident Vorberg had not seen Miles's face, concealed as it had been by the combat armor's helmet, and afterwards, of course . . . The Dendarii surgeon reported Vorberg had only the haziest and most confused memory of his rescue.

Miles wished he could delete the entire Blue Squad record from his report. Impractical, alas. Having the most interesting sequence missing would draw Illyan's attention as surely as a signal fire on a mountaintop.

Of course, if he deleted the entire appendix, all the squad records, it would be camouflaged in the general absence. . . .

Miles considered what could replace Appendix C. He had written plenty of brief or vague mission synopses in the past, in the press of events or exhaustion. Due to a malfunction, the right-arm plasma arc in Suit #032 locked into the "on" position. In the several minutes of confusion surrounding correcting the malfunction, the subject was unfortunately hit by the plasma beam. . . . Not his fault, if the reader construed this as a malfunction in the suit and not its wearer.

No. He could not lie to Illyan. Not even in the passive voice.

I wouldn't be lying. I'd just be editing my report for length.

It couldn't be done. He'd be sure to miss some tiny corroborative detail in one of the other files, and Illyan's analysts would pick it up, and then he'd be in ten times the trouble.

Not that there was that much in the other sections pertinent to this brief incident. It wouldn't be that hard to run over the whole report.

This is a bad idea.

Still ... it would be interesting practice. He might have the job of reading field reports someday, God forbid. It would be educational to test how much fudging was possible. For his curiosity's sake, he recorded the full report, made a copy, and began playing around with the copy. What minimum alterations and deletions were required to erase a field agent s embarrassment?

It only took about twenty minutes.

He stared at the finished product. It was downright artistic. He felt a little sick to his stomach. This could get me cashiered.

Only if I got caught. His whole life felt as if it had been based on that principle; he'd outrun assassins, medics, the regulations of the Service, the constraints of his Vor rank . . . he'd outrun death itself, demonstrably. I can even move faster than you, Illyan.

He considered the present disposition of Illyan's independent observers in the Dendarii fleet. One was detached back with the fleets main body; the second posed as a comm officer on the Ariel. Neither had been aboard the Peregrine or out with the squads; neither could contradict him.

I think I'd better think about this for a while. He classified the doctored version top secret and filed it beside the original. He stretched to ease the ache in his back. Desk work did that to one.

His cabin door chimed. "Yes?"

"Baz and Elena," a woman's voice floated through the intercom.

Miles cleared his comconsole, slipped his uniform jacket back on, and released the door lock. "Enter." He turned in his station chair, smiling a little, to watch them come in.

Baz was Dendarii Commodore Baz Jesek, chief engineer of the Fleet and Miles's nominal second-in-command. Elena was Captain Elena Bothari-Jesek, Baz's wife, and current commander of the Peregrine. Both were among the few fellow Barrayarans the Dendarii employed, and both were fully apprised of Miles's dual identity as Admiral Naismith, slightly renegade Betan mercenary, and Lieutenant Lord Miles Vorkosigan, dutiful Barrayaran ImpSec covert ops agent, for both predated the creation of the Dendarii Fleet itself. The lanky, balding Baz had been in on the beginning of it, a deserter on the run whom Miles had picked up and (in his private opinion) re-created. Elena . . . was another matter altogether.

She'd been Miles's Barrayaran bodyguard's daughter, raised in Count Vorkosigan's household, and practically Miles's foster sister. Barred from Barrayaran military service by her gender, she had longed for the status of a soldier on her army-mad homeworld. Miles had found a way to get it for her. She looked all soldier now, slim and as tall as her husband in her crisp Dendarii undress grays. Her dark hair, clipped in wisps around her ears, framed pale hawk features and alert dark eyes.

So how might their lives have been different, if she had only said "Yes" to Miles's passionate, confused proposal of marriage when they were both eighteen? Where would they be now? Living the comfortable lives of Vor aristocrats in the capital? Would they be happy? Or growing bored with each other, and regretting their lost chances? No, they wouldn't even know what chances they had lost. Maybe there would have been children. . . . Miles cut off this line of thought. Unproductive.

Yet somewhere, suppressed deep in Miles's heart, something still waited. Elena seemed happy enough with her choice of husband. But a mercenary's life—as he had recent reason to know—was chancy indeed. A little difference in some enemy's aim, somewhere along the line, might have turned her into a grieving widow, awaiting consolation . . . except that Elena saw more line combat than Baz did. As an evil plot, brooded upon in the recesses of Miles's mind in the secrecy of the night-cycle, this one had a serious flaw. Well, one couldn't help one's thoughts. One could help opening one's mouth and saying something really stupid, though.

"Hi, folks. Pull up a seat. What can I do for you?" Miles said cheerfully.

Elena smiled back, and the two officers arranged station chairs on the other side of Miles's comconsole desk. There was something unusually formal in the way they seated themselves. Baz opened his hand to Elena, to cede her the first word, sure sign of a tricky bit coming up. Miles pulled himself into focus.

She began with the obvious. "Are you feeling all right now, Miles?"

"Oh, I'm fine."

"Good." She took a deep breath. "My lord—"

Another sure sign of something unusual, when she addressed him in terms of their Barrayaran liege relationship.

"—we wish to resign." Her smile, confusingly, crept wider, as if she'd just said something delightful.

Miles almost fell off his chair. "What? Why?"

Elena glanced at Baz, and he took up the thread. "I've received a job offer for an engineering position from an orbital shipyard at Escobar. It would pay enough for us both to retire."

"I, I ... didn't realize you were dissatisfied with your pay grades. If this is about money, something can be arranged."

"It has nothing to do with money," said Baz.

He'd been afraid of that. No, that would be too easy—

"We want to retire to start a family," Elena finished.

What was it about that simple, rational statement that put Miles so forcibly in mind of the moment when the snipers needle grenade had blown his chest out all over the pavement? "Uh . . ."

"As Dendarii officers," Elena went on, "we can simply give appropriate notice and resign, of course. But as your liege-sworn vassals, we must petition you for release as an Extraordinary Favor."

"Um . . , I'm . . . not sure the Fleet's prepared to lose my two top officers at one blow. Especially Baz. I rely on him, when I'm away, as I have to be about half the time, not just for engineering and logistics, but to keep things under control. To make sure the private contracts don't step on the toes of any of Barrayar's interests. To know ... all the secrets. I don't see how I can replace him."

"We thought you could divide Baz's current job in half," said Elena helpfully.

"Yes. My engineering second's quite ready to move up," Baz assured him. "Technically, he's better than I am. Younger, you know."

"And everyone knows you've been grooming Elli Quinn for years for command position," Elena went on. "She's itching for promotion. And ready, too. I think she more than proved that last year."

"She's not . . . Barrayaran. Illyan might get twitchy about that," Miles temporized. "In such a critical position."

"He never has so far. He knows her well enough by now, surely. And ImpSec employs plenty of non-Barrayaran agents," said Elena.

"Are you sure you want to formally retire? I mean, is that really necessary? Wouldn't an extended leave or a sabbatical be enough?"

Elena shook her head. "Becoming parents . . . changes people. I don't know that I'd want to come back."

"I thought you wanted to become a soldier. With all your heart, more than anything. Like me." Do you have any idea how much of all this was for you, just for you?

"I did. I have. I'm . . . done. I know enough is not a concept you particularly relate to. I don't know if the wildest successes would ever be enough to fill you up."

That's because I am so very empty. . . .

"But ... all my childhood, all my youth, Barrayar pounded into me that being a soldier was the only job that counted. The most important thing there was, or ever could be. And that I could never be important, because I could never be a soldier. Well, I've proved Barrayar wrong. I've been a soldier, and a damned good one."

"True . . ."

"And now I've come to wonder what else Barrayar was wrong about. Like, what's really important, and who is really important. When you were in cryo-stasis last year, I spent a lot of time with your mother."

"Oh." On a journey to a homeworld she'd once sworn passionately never to set foot upon again, yes . . .

"We talked a lot, she and I. I'd always thought I admired her because she was a soldier in her youth, for Beta Colony in the Escobar War, before she immigrated and married your father. But once, reminiscing, she went into this sort of litany about all the things she'd ever been. Like astrocartographer, and explorer, and ship's captain, and POW, and wife, and mother, and politician . . . the list went on and on. There was no telling, she said, what she would be next. And I thought... I want to be like that. I want to be like her. Not just one thing, but a world of possibilities. I want to find out who else I can be."

Miles glanced covertly at Baz, who was smiling proudly at his wife. No question, her will was driving this decision. But Baz was, quite properly, Elena's abject slave. Everything she said would go for him too. Rats.

"Don't you think . . . you might want to come back, after?"

"In ten, fifteen, twenty years?" said Elena. "Do you even think the Dendarii Mercenaries will still exist? No. I don't think I'll want to go back. I'll want to go on. I already know that much."

"Surely you'll want some kind of work. Something that uses your skills."

"I've thought of becoming a commercial shipmaster. It would use most of my training, except for the killing-people parts. I'm tired of death. I want to switch to life."

"I'm . . . sure you'll be superb at whatever you choose to do." For a mad moment, Miles considered the possibility of denying their release. No, you can't go, you have to stay with me. . . . "Technically, you realize, I can only release you from this duty. I can't release you from your liege relationship, any more than Emperor Gregor can release me from being Vor. Not that we can't . . . agree to ignore each others' existences for extended periods of time."

Elena gave him a kindly smile that reminded him quite horribly for a moment of his mother, as if she were seeing the whole Vor system as a hallucination, a legal fiction to be edited at will. A look of centered power, not checking outside of herself for ... for anything. *

It wasn't fair, for people to go and change on him, while his back was turned being dead. To change without giving notice, or even asking permission. He would howl with loss, except . . . you lost her years ago. This change has been coming since forever. 'You're just pathologically incapable of admitting defeat. That was a useful quality, sometimes, in a military leader. It was a pain in the neck in a lover, or would-be lover.

But, wondering why he was bothering, Miles went through the proper Vor forms with them, each kneeling before him to place his or her hands between Miles's. He turned his palms out and watched Elena's long slim hands fly up like birds, freed from some cage. I did not know I had imprisoned you, my first love. I'm sorry. . . .

"Well, I wish you every joy," Miles went on, as Elena rose and took Baz's hand. He managed a wink. "Name the first one after me, eh?"

Elena grinned. "I'm not sure she'd appreciate that. Milesanna? Milesia?"

"Milesia sounds like a disease," Miles admitted, taken aback. "In that case, don't. I wouldn't want her to grow up hating me in absentia."

"How soon can we go?" asked Elena. "We are between contracts. The Fleet's scheduled for some downtime anyway."

"Everything's in order in Engineering and Logistics," Baz added. "For a change, no postmission damage repairs."

Delay? No. Let it be done swiftly. "Quite soon, I expect. I'll have to notify Captain Quinn, of course."

"Commodore Quinn," Elena nodded. "She'll like the sound of that." She gave Miles an unmilitary parting hug. He stood still, trying to breathe in the last lingering scent of her, as the door whispered closed behind them.

Quinn was attending to duties downside on Zoave Twilight; Miles left orders for her to report to him upon her return to the Peregrine. He called up Dendarii Fleet personnel rosters upon his comconsole while he waited, and studied Baz's proposed replacements. There was no reason they shouldn't work out. Promote this man here, move that one and that one to cover the holes. . . . He was not, he assured himself, in shock about this. There were limits even to his capacity for self-dramatization, after all. He was a little unbalanced, perhaps, like a man accustomed to leaning on a decorative cane having it suddenly snatched away. Or a swordstick, like old Commodore Koudelka's. If it weren't for his private little medical problem, he would have to say the couple had chosen their timing well, from the Fleet's point of view.

Quinn blew in at last, trim and fresh in her undress grays, bearing a code-locked document case. Since they were alone, she greeted him with a nonregulation kiss, which he returned with interest. "The Barrayaran Embassy sends you this, love. Maybe it's a Winterfair gift from Uncle Simon."

"We can hope." He decoded and unlocked the case. "Ha! Indeed. It's a credit chit. Interim payment for the mission just concluded. Headquarters can't know we're done yet—he must have wanted to make sure we didn't run out of resources in the middle of things. I'm glad to know he takes personnel retrieval so seriously. It might be me needing this kind of attention, someday."

"It was you, last year, and yes he does," agreed Quinn. "You have to give ImpSec that much credit, at least, they do take care of their own. A very old-Barrayaran quality, for an organization that tries to be so up-to-date."

"And what's this, hm?" He fished the second item out of the case. Ciphered instructions, for his eyes only.

Quinn politely moved out of the line of sight, and he ran it through his comconsole, though her native curiosity couldn't help prompting a, "So? Orders from home? Congratulations? Complaints?"

"Well . . . huh." He sat back, puzzled. "Short and uninformative. Why'd they bother to deep-code it? I am ordered to report home, in person, to ImpSec HQ, immediately. There's a scheduled government courier ship passing through Tau Ceti, which will lay over and wait for me—I'm to rendezvous with it by the swiftest possible means, including commercial carrier if necessary. Didn't they learn anything from Vorberg's little adventure? It doesn't even say, Conclude mission and . . . , it just says, Come. I'm to drop everything, apparently. If it's that urgent, it has to be a new mission assignment, in which case why are they requiring me to spend weeks traveling home, when I'll just have to spend more weeks traveling right back out to the Fleet?" A sudden icy fear gripped his chest. Unless it's something personal. My father—my mother . . . no. If anything had happened to Count Vorkosigan, presently serving the Imperium as Viceroy and colonial governor of Sergyar, the galactic news services would have picked it up even as far away as Zoave Twilight.

"What happens"—Quinn, leaning against the far side of the comconsole desk, found something interesting to study on her fingernails—"if you collapse again while you're traveling?"

"Not much," he shrugged.

"How do you know?"

"Er . . ."

She glanced up sharply. "I didn't know psychological denial could drop so many IQ points over the side. Dammit, you've got to do something about those seizures. You can't just . . . ignore them out of existence, though apparently that's exactly what you've been attempting."

"I was trying to do something. I thought the Dendarii surgeon could get a handle on it. I was frantic to get back out to the fleet, to a doctor I could trust. Well, I can trust her all right, but she says she can't help me. Now I have to think of something else."

"You trusted her. Why not me?"

Miles managed a somewhat pathetic shrug. The palpable inadequacy of this response drove him to add placatingly, "She follows orders. I was afraid you might try to do things for my own good, whether they were the things I wanted or not."

After a moment spent digesting this, Quinn went on a shade less patiently, "How about your own people? The Imperial Military Hospital at Vorbarr Sultana is nearly up to galactic medical standards, these days."

He fell silent, then said, "I should have done that last winter. I'm . . . committed to finding another solution, now."

"In other words, you lied to your superiors. And now you're caught."

I'm not caught yet. "You know what I have to lose." He rose and circled the desk to take her hand, before she started biting her nails; they fell into an embrace. He tilted his face back, slipped an arm up around her neck, and pressed her down to his level for a kiss. He could feel the fear, as suppressed in her as it was in him, in her quick breathing and somber eyes.

"Oh, Miles. Tell them—tell them your brains were still thawing out back then. You weren't responsible for your judgments. Throw yourself on Illyan's mercy, quick, before it gets any worse."

He shook his head. "Any time up to last week, that might have worked, maybe, but after what I did to Vorberg? I don't think it can get any worse. I wouldn't have any mercy on a subordinate who pulled a trick like that, why should Illyan? Unless Illyan . . . isn't presented with the problem in the first place."

"Great and little gods, you're not thinking you can still conceal this, are you?"

"It drops out of this mission report quite neatly."

She pushed back from him, aghast. "Your brains did get frostbitten."

Irritated, he snapped, "Illyan cultivates his reputation for omniscience quite carefully, but it's hype. Don't let those Horus-eye badges"—he mimed the ImpSec insignia by holding his circled thumb and fingers up to his eyes, and peering through owlishly—"affect your mind. We just try to look like we always know what we're doing. I've seen the secret files, I know how screwed up things can really get, behind the scenes. That fancy memory chip in Illyan's brain doesn't make him a genius, just remarkably obnoxious."

"There are too many witnesses."

"All Dendarii missions are classified. The troops won't blab."

"Except to each other. The story's all over the ship, half-garbled. People have asked me about it."

"Uh . . . what did you tell them?" She shrugged a shoulder, angrily. "I've been implying it was a suit malfunction."

"Oh. Good. Nevertheless . . . they're all here, and Illyan's way over there. A vast distance. What can he learn, except through what I tell him?"

"Only half-vast." Quinn's bared teeth had little in common with a smile.

"Come on, use your reason. I know you can. If Imp Sec was going to catch this, they should have done it months ago. All the Jacksonian evidence has obviously escaped them clean."

A pulse beat in her throat. "There's nothing reasonable about this! Have you lost your grip, have you lost your frigging mind? I swear to the gods, you are getting as impossible to manage as your clone-brother Mark!"

"How did Mark jump into this discussion?" It was a bad sign, warning of a precipitous downhill slide in the tone of the debate. The three most ferocious arguments he'd ever had with Elli were all over Mark, all recently. Good God. He'd avoided—mostly—their usual intimacy this mission for fear of her witnessing another seizure. He hadn't thought he could explain one away as a really terrific new kind of orgasm. Had she been attributing his coolness to their lingering differences about his brother? "Mark has nothing to do with this.

"Mark has everything to do with this! If you hadn't gone downside after him, you would never have been killed. And you wouldn't have been left with some damned cryonic short circuit in your head. You may think he's the greatest invention since the Necklin drive, but I loathe the fat little creep!"

"Well, I like the fat little creep! Somebody has to. I swear, you are frigging jealous. Don't be such a damned cast-iron bitch!"

They were standing apart, both with their fists clenched, breathing hard. If it came to blows, he'd lose, in every sense. Instead, he bit out, "Baz and Elena are quitting, did you know that? I'm promoting you to Commodore and Fleet-second in Baz's place. Pearson will take over as Fleet engineer. And you will also be brevet captain of the Peregrine till you make rendezvous with the other half of the Fleet. The choice of the Peregrine's new commander will be your first staff appointment. Pick someone you think you can tr . . . work with. Dismissed!"

Blast it, that was not how he'd intended to present Quinn with her longed-for promotion. He'd meant to lay it at her feet as a great prize, to delight her soul and reward her extraordinary effort. Not fling it at her head like a pot in the middle of a raging domestic argument, when words could no longer convey the weight of one's emotions.

Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. "And where the hell do you think you're going, without me as a bodyguard?" she bit out. "I know Illyan gave you the most explicit standing orders that you're not to travel alone without one. How much more career suicide do you think you need?"

"In this sector, a bodyguard is a formality, and a waste of resources." He inhaled. "I'll . . . take Sergeant Taura. That ought to be enough bodyguard to satisfy the most paranoid ImpSec boss. And she's certainly earned a vacation."

"Oh! You!" It was seldom indeed that Quinn ran out of invective. She turned on her heel, and stalked to the door, where she turned back and snapped him a salute, forcing him to return it. The automatic door, alas, was impossible to slam, but it seemed to shut with a snake-like hiss.

He flung himself into his station chair, and brooded at his comconsole. He hesitated. Then he called up the short mission file, and ciphered it onto a security card. He punched up the long version—and hit the erase command. Done.

He stuffed the ciphered report into the code-locked pouch, tossed it onto his bed, and rose to begin packing for the journey home.

CHAPTER THREE

The only two adjoining cabins left aboard the first Tau Ceti-bound jump-ship heading out of Zoave Twilight happened to be premier-class luxury suites. Miles smiled at this misfortune, and made a mental note to document the security necessity for Illyan's accountants, preferably while pointing out what obscene profits the mission just completed had made. He pottered about, taking his time putting away his sparse luggage, and waiting for Sergeant Taura to finish her meticulous security sweep. The lighting and decor were serene, the beds were spacious and soft, the bathrooms individual and private, and they didn't even have to go out for food; unlimited room service was included in the stiff fare. Once the ship was space-borne, they would be in effect inhabiting their own private universe for the next seven days.

The rest of the trip home would be much less inviting. At the Tau Ceti transfer station he would change uniforms and identities, and step aboard the Barrayaran government vessel in the persona of Lieutenant Lord Miles Vorkosigan, ImpSec courier, a modest young officer with the same rank and duties as the unlucky Lieutenant Vorberg. He shook out his Imperial undress greens, and hung them up in a lockable cupboard along with the uniform boots, their shine protected in a sealed bag. Courier officer always made an excellent cover-identity for Miles s wide-ranging travels to and from the Dendarii Fleet; a courier never had to explain anything. On the debit side, the company aboard the next ship would be all-male, all-military, and, alas, all Barrayaran. No bodyguard required. Sergeant Taura could split off to return to the Dendarii, and Miles would be left alone with his fellow subjects of the Imperium.

From long experience, he anticipated their reaction to him, to his apparent undersized unfitness for his military duties. They'd say nothing overt—it would be obvious to them that he held this cushy courier's sinecure by virtue of some powerful nepotistic string-pulling on the part of his father the Viceroy Admiral Count Vor-etcetera. It was exactly the reaction he desired, to maintain his deep cover, and Lieutenant Vorkosigan the Dull would do nothing to correct their assumptions. His own slur-sensitive antennae would fill in the blanks. Well, maybe the crew would include men he'd traveled with before, used to him by now.

He locked the cupboard. Let Lieutenant Vorkosigan and all his troubles stay out of sight and out of mind, for the next week. He had more engaging concerns. His belly shivered in anticipation.

Sergeant Taura returned at last, and ducked her head through the open doorway between their two rooms. "All clear," she reported. "No bugs found anywhere. In fact, no new passengers or cargo added at all since we booked passage. We've just left orbit."

He smiled up, and up at her, his most unusual Dendarii trooper, and one of his best. No surprise that she should be good at her job; she'd been genetically engineered for the task.

Taura was the living prototype of a genetic design project of dubious morality conceived and carried out, where else, on Jackson's Whole. They'd wanted a super-soldier, and they'd assigned a research committee to carry out the project. A committee consisting entirely of biological engineers, and not one experienced soldier. They'd wanted something spectacular, to impress the client. They had certainly achieved that.

When Miles had first encountered her, the sixteen-year-old Taura had reached her full adult height of eight feet, all of it lean and muscular. Her fingers and toes were tipped with heavy claws, and her outslung mouth made fierce with fangs that locked over her lips. Her body seemed to glow with the radiant heat of a burning metabolism that lent her unnatural strength and speed. That, and her tawny golden eyes, gave her a wolfish air; when fully concentrated upon her work, her ferocious stare could cause armed men to drop their weapons and throw themselves flat on the floor, a psychological-warfare effect Miles had actually witnessed, on one delightful occasion.

Miles had long thought that she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen, in her own way. You just had to be able to see her properly. And unlike his blurred-together Dendarii missions, Miles could enumerate every rare occasion they had ever made love, from their very first encounter, six, seven years ago now? From before he and Quinn had ever become a couple, in point of fact. Taura was some kind of very special first for him, as he had been for her, and that secret bond had never faded.

Oh, they'd tried to be good. Dendarii regs against cross-rank fraternization were for the benefit of all, to protect the rankers from exploitation and the officers from losing control of discipline, or worse. And Miles had been quite determined, as the young and earnest Admiral Naismith, to set a good example for his troops, a virtuous resolve that had slipped away . . . somewhere. After the umpteenth we've-lost-count-again time he had been almost killed, perhaps.

Well, if you couldn't be good, at least you could be discreet.

"Very good, Sergeant." He held out a hand to her. "You may as well take a break—for the next seven days, eh?"

Her face lit; her lips drew back in a smile that fully exposed her fangs. "Really?" she said, her resonant voice thrilling.

"Really."

She trod over to him, her muscled mass making the deck creak slightly beneath her Dendarii combat boots, and bent to exchange a promissory kiss. Her mouth, as always, was hot and exhilarating. The fangs might be a subliminal trigger to that adrenaline rush, but mostly it was just the sheer wonderful . . . Taura-ness of her. She was life-relishing, experience-devouring, living in an eternal Now, and for very good reasons. . . . He forced his mind away from a descending swoop on that future, or any other, and curled his hand around the back of her head to loosen the neatly pinned-up braid of her mahogany hair.

"I'll freshen up," she grinned, breaking away after a time. She twitched at her loosened gray uniform jacket.

"Enjoy the hell out of the bathing facilities," he advised cordially. "Its the most sybaritic setup I've seen since Dyne Station's Ambassadorial Baths."

He retreated to his own facility, to ditch uniform and rank insignia and to engage in a pleasant ritual of leisurely preparation, involving depilation, cleanliness, and cologne. Taura deserved the best. She also deserved all the time she wanted. Seldom could she shed the stern Sergeant, and reveal that feminine self shyly hidden on the inside. Seldom indeed could she trust anyone to guard that vulnerability. The Fairy Princess, he thought of her. We all have our secret identities, it seems.

He dressed himself sarong-fashion in a prewarmed fluffy towel, and went to perch on his bed, waiting alertly. Had she anticipated this private space together, and if so, what little garment would she bring out of her valise this time? She would insist on trying out these would-be sexy numbers on him, not seeming to realize how like a goddess she was already when dressed in nothing but her streaming hair. Well, all right, not streaming hair; left to its own devices it tended to go stiff and uncooperative and frizzy, tickling his nose, but it looked good on her. He hoped she had managed to lose the horrifying pink thing with the red feathers. It had taken all his tact, last time, to get across the idea that perhaps the color and design choice did not compliment her best features, without ever once intimating any fault in her taste or personal appearance. She might be able to break him with one hand, but he could kill her with a word. Never.

His own face lit with unabashed delight at her return. She was wearing something cream-colored and sleek and shimmery-silky, meters of fabric so fine one might with little effort draw it through a ring. The goddess-effect was nicely enhanced, her immense intrinsic dignity unimpaired. "Oh, splendid!" he caroled, with unfeigned enthusiasm.

"Do you really think so?" She spun for him; the silk floated outward, along with a spicy-musky scent that seemed to go straight up his nostrils to his back-brain with no intervening stops. Her bare toes did not click on the floor—prudently, she had trimmed and blunted all her nails, before painting them with gold enamel. He'd have no hard-to-explain need for stitches or surgical glue this time.

She lay down beside him, their ludicrous height-difference obviated. Here at last they might fill their hunger for human, or almost-human, touch until sated, without interruption, without comment. . . . He bristled defensively inside, at the thought of anyone watching this, of some abrupt surprised bark of laughter or sarcastic witticism. Was his edginess because he was breaking his own rules? He didn't expect any outsider to understand this relationship.

Did he understand it himself? Once, he might have mumbled something about the thrill, an obsession with mountain climbing, the ultimate sex fantasy for a short guy. Later, maybe something about a blow for life against death. Maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe it was just love.

He woke much, much later, and watched her as she slept. It was a measure of her trust, that his slight stirring did not bring her hyper-awake, as her genetically programmed drives usually rendered her. Of all her many and fascinating responses, the fact that she slept for him was the most telling, if one knew her inside story.

He studied the play of light and shadow over her long, long ivory body, half-draped with their well-stirred sheets. He let his hand flow along the curves, a few centimeters from the surface, buoyed by the feverish heat rising from her golden skin. The gentle movement of her breathing made the shadows dance. Her breathing was, as always, a little too deep, a little too fast. He wanted to slow it down. As if not her days, but her inhalations and exhalations were numbered, and when she'd used them all up ...

She was the last survivor of her fellow prototypes. They had all been genetically programmed for short lives, in part, perhaps, as a sort of fail-safe mechanism, in part, perhaps, in an effort to inculcate soldierly courage, out of some dim theory that a short life would be more readily sacrificed in battle than a long one. Miles did not think the researchers had quite understood courage, or life. The super-soldiers had died fast, when they died, with no lingering years of arthritic old age to gradually wean them from their mortality. They suffered only weeks, months at most, of a deterioration as fierce as their lives had been. It was as if they were designed to go up in flame, not down in shame. He studied the tiny silver glints in Taura's mahogany hair. They had not been there last year.

She's only twenty-two, for God's sake.

The Dendarii fleet surgeon had studied her carefully, and given her drugs to slow her ferocious metabolism. She only ate as much as two men now, not four. Year by year, like pulling hot gold wire through a screen, they had extended Taura's life. Yet sometime, that wire must snap.

How much more time? A year? Two? When he returned to the Dendarii next time, would she still be there to greet him, with a proper, Hello, Admiral Naismith in public, and a most improper, not to mention rude and raucous, Howdy, Lover! in private . . . ?

It's a good thing she loves Admiral Naismith. Lord Vorkosigan couldn't handle this.

He thought a bit guiltily of Admiral Naismith's other lover, the public and acknowledged Quinn. Nobody had to explain or excuse being in love with the beautiful Quinn. She was self-evidently his match.

He was not, exactly, being unfaithful to Elli Quinn. Technically, Taura predated her. And he and Quinn had exchanged no vows, no oaths, no promises. Not for lack of asking; he'd asked her a painful number of times. But she too was in love with Admiral Naismith. Not Lord Vorkosigan. The thought of becoming Lady Vorkosigan, grounded downside forever on a planet she herself had stigmatized as a "backwater dirtball," had been enough to send space-bred Quinn screaming in the opposite direction, or at least, excusing herself uneasily.

Admiral Naismith's love-life was some sort of adolescents dream: unlimited and sometimes astonishing sex, no responsibilities. Why didn't it seem to be working anymore?

He loved Quinn, loved the energy and intelligence and drive of her, their shared passion for the military life. She was one of the most wonderful friends he'd ever had. But in the end, she offered him only . . . sterility. They had no more future together than did he and Elena, bound to Baz, or he and Taura. Who is dying.

God, I hurt. It would be almost a relief, to escape Admiral Naismith, and return to Lord Vorkosigan. Lord Vorkosigan had no sex life.

He paused. So ... when had that happened, that. . . lack in his life? Rather a long time ago, actually. Odd. He hadn't noticed it before.

Taura's eyes half-opened, honey-colored glints. She favored him with a sleepy, fanged smile.

"Hungry?" he asked her, confident of the answer.

"Uh huh."

They spent a pleasant few minutes studying the lengthy menu provided by the ship's galley, then punched in a massive order. With Taura along, Miles realized cheerfully, he might get to try a bite of nearly everything, with no embarrassing wasteful leftovers.

While waiting for their feast to arrive, Taura piled pillows and sat up in bed, and regarded him with a reminiscent gleam in her gold eyes. "Do you remember the first time you fed me?"

"Yes. In Ryoval's dungeons. That repellent dry ration bar."

"Better rat bars than raw rats, let me tell you."

"I can do better now."

"And how."

When people were rescued, they ought to stay rescued. Wasn't that the deal? And then we all live happily ever after, right? Till we die. But with this medical discharge threat hanging over his head, was he so sure that it was Taura who would go first? Maybe it would be Admiral Naismith after all. ... "That was one of my first personnel retrievals. Still one of the best, in a sort of cockeyed way."

"Was it love at first sight, for you?"

"Mm . . . no, truthfully. More like terror at first sight. Falling in love took, oh, an hour or so."

"Me, too. I didn't really start to fall seriously in love with you till you came back for me."

"You do know . . . that didn't exactly start out as a rescue mission." An understatement: he'd been hired to "terminate the experiment."

"But you turned it into one. It's your favorite kind, I think. You always seem to be especially cheerful whenever you're running a rescue, no matter how hairy things are getting."

"Not all the rewards of my job are financial. I don't deny, it's an emotional kick to pull some desperate somebody out of a deep, deep hole. Especially when nobody else thinks it can be done. I adore showing off, and the audience is always so appreciative." Well, maybe not Vorberg.

"I've sometimes wondered if you're like that Barrayaran fellow you told me about, who went around giving everybody liver pates for Winterfair 'cause he loved them himself. And was always frustrated that no one ever gave him any."

"I don't need to be rescued. Usually." Last year's sojourn on Jackson's Whole having been a memorable exception. Except that his memory of it had a big three-month blank in it.

"Mm, not rescue, exactly. Rescue's consequence. Freedom. You give freedom away whenever you can. Is it because it's something you want yourself?"

And can't have? "Naw. It's the adrenaline high I crave."

Their dinner arrived, on two carts. Miles sent away the human steward at the door, and he and Taura busied themselves in a brief domestic bustle, getting it all nicely arranged. The cabin was so spacious, the table wasn't even fold-down, but permanently bolted to the deck. Miles nibbled, and watched Taura eat. Feeding Taura always made him feel strangely happy inside. It was an impressive sight in its own right. "Don't overlook those little fried cheese things with the spicy sauce," he pointed out helpfully. "Lots of calories in them, I'm sure."

"Thanks." A companionable silence fell, broken only by steady munching.

"Contented?" he inquired.

She swallowed a bite of something meltingly delicious formed into a dense cake in the shape of a star. "Oh, yes."

He smiled. She had a talent for happiness, he decided, living in the present as she so carefully did. Did the foreknowledge of her death ever ride upon her shoulder like a carrion crow . . . ? Yes, of course it does. But let us not break the mood.

"Did you mind, when you found out last year that I was Lord Vorkosigan? That Admiral Naismith wasn't real?"

She shrugged. "It seemed right to me. I always thought you ought to be some sort of prince in disguise."

"Hardly that!" he laughed. God save me from the Imperium, amen. Or maybe he was lying now, instead of then. Maybe Admiral Naismith was the real one, Lord Vorkosigan put on like a mask. Naismith's flat Betan accent fell so trippingly from his tongue. Vorkosigan's Barrayaran gutturals seemed to require an increasingly conscious effort, anymore. Naismith was so easy to slip into, Vorkosigan so ... painful.

"Actually"—he picked up the thread of their previous conversation, confident that she would follow—"freedom is exactly what I don't want. Not in the sense of being aimless, or, or ... unemployed." Especially not unemployed. "It's not free time that I want—the present moment excepted," he added hastily. She nodded encouragement. "I want . . . my destiny, I guess. To be, or become, as fully me as I possibly can." Hence the invention of Admiral Naismith, to hold all those parts of himself for which there was no room on Barrayar.

He'd thought about it, God knew, a hundred times. Thought of abandoning Vorkosigan forever, and becoming just Naismith. Kick free of the financial and patriotic shackles of ImpSec, go renegade, make a galactic living with the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. But that was a one-way trip. For a Vor lord to possess a private military force was high treason, illegal as hell, a capital crime. He could never go home again, once he went down that road.

Above all, he could not do that to his father. The-Count-my-Father, a name spoken all in one breath. Not while the old man lived, and hoped all his old-Barrayaran hopes for his son. He wasn't sure how his mother would react, Betan to the bone as she was even after all these years of living on Barrayar. She'd have no objection to the principle of the thing, but she didn't exactly approve of the military. She didn't exactly disapprove, either; she just made it plain that she thought there were better things for intelligent human beings to do with their lives. And once his father died . . . Miles would be Count Vorkosigan, with a District, and an important vote in the Council of Counts, and duties all day long. . . . Live, Father. Live long.

There were parts of himself for which Admiral Naismith held no place, either.

"Speaking of memorable rescues"—Taura's lovely baritone brought him back to the present—"how's your poor clone-twin Mark getting along now? Has he found his destiny yet?"

At least Taura didn't refer to his one and only sibling as the fat little creep. He smiled at her, gratefully. "Quite well, I think. He left Barrayar with my parents when they departed for Sergyar, stayed with them a bit, then went on to Beta Colony. My Betan grandmother is keeping an eye on him for Mother. He's signed in at the University of Silica, same town as she lives in—studying accounting, of all things. He seems to like it. Sort of incomprehensible. I can't help feeling one's twin ought to share more of one's tastes than an ordinary sib."

"Maybe later in life, you'll grow more alike."

"I don't think Mark will ever involve himself with the military again."

"No, but maybe you'll get interested in accounting."

He glanced up suspiciously—oh, good. She was joking. He could tell by the crinkle at the corners of her eyes. But when they uncrinkled, faint crow's feet still tracked there. "As long as I never acquire his girth."

He sipped his wine. Mention of Mark recalled Jackson's Whole, and his cryo-revival, and all his secret problems that were presently spinning out in unwelcome consequence. It also recalled Dr. Durona, his cryo-revival surgeon. Had the refugee Durona sisters actually succeeded in setting up their new clinic on Escobar, far from their unbeloved ex-home? Mark ought to know; he was still channeling money to them, according to his last communication. And if so, were they ready to take on a new, or rather, old patient yet? Very, very quietly?

He could take a long leave, ostensibly to visit his parents on Sergyar. From Sergyar it was only a short hop to Escobar. Once there he could see Rowan Durona. . . . He might even be able to slip it past Illyan even more openly, feigning it was a trip to see a lover. Or at least slip it past the Count. Even ImpSec agents were allowed, grudgingly, to have private lives, though if Illyan himself had one it was news to Miles. Miles s brief love affair with Rowan had been sort of a mistake, an accident that had happened while he was still suffering from cryo-amnesia. But they had parted, he thought, on good terms. Might he persuade her to treat him, yet make no records of it for ImpSec to find?

It could be done . . . get his head fixed, whatever the hell was wrong with it, and go quietly on, with no one the wiser. Right?

Part of him was already beginning to regret not decanting both versions of his mission report to Imp-Sec onto cipher-cards, and saving the final decision for later, when he'd had a bit more time to think it through. Turn in the one, eat the other. But he was committed now, and if he was committed, he needed a better plan than trusting to luck.

Escobar it was. As soon as his schedule allowed. Extremely annoying, that he wasn't being routed through Escobar on this run home.

He sat back, and regarded the triumphant litter of plates, cups, glasses, and bowls crowding the table, looking rather like a battle scene after . . . well, after Taura had been through. No more mopping up required. He glanced past her silk-draped shoulder to their bed. "Well, milady. A nap? Or something?"

She followed his glance. "Something. Then a nap," she decided.

"At your command." He bowed vorishly, sitting, and rose to take her hand. "Seize the night."

CHAPTER FOUR

As was standard operating procedure for returning couriers, an ImpSec groundcar and driver picked up Miles at the military shuttleport outside Vorbarr Sultana, and whisked him directly to ImpSec headquarters downtown. He wished the driver would slow down, or circle the block a few more times, as HQ loomed up around the last corner. As if the frustrating weeks he had spent thinking about his dilemma aboard the government ship on the way home were not enough. He didn't need more thought, he needed action.

The driver passed the security checkpoint and pulled through the gates to the massive gray building, vast and grim and foreboding. The impression was not all due to Miles s state of mind; ImpSec HQ was one of the ugliest buildings in Vorbarr Sultana. Tourists from the backcountry, who might otherwise have been expected to avoid the place, drove by just to look at it, in honor of the interesting reputation of the architect, whom legend had it had died insane after the abrupt eclipse of his patron Emperor Yuri. The driver took Miles past the daunting facade, and around to the discreet side entrance reserved for couriers, spies, informers, analysts, secretaries, janitors, and others with real business in the place.

Miles dismissed driver and car with a wave, and stood in the autumn afternoon chill outside the door, hesitating one last time. He had a sinking conviction his carefully crafted plan was never going to work.

And even if it did work, I'd have my head cranked over my shoulder forever, waiting to be caught ex post facto. No. He would not go through with it. He would turn in the doctored cipher-card, yes, he'd left himself no choice there, but then (and before Illyan had a chance to review the thrice-damned thing) he would give Illyan his verbal report and tell him the exact truth. He could feign that he'd felt the news of his medical flaw was too hot to put on record even in cipher. As if he were tossing the problem, promptly and properly, into Illyan's lap for decision. It wasn't physically possible for Miles to have made it home any faster anyway.

If he stood here in the cold any longer, pretending to study the stylized granite monsters carved in low relief on the door lintel—pressed gargoyles, some wag had dubbed them—a guard would come up and make polite and pointed inquiries at him. Determined, he slid out of his military greatcoat and folded it neatly over his arm, clutched the cipher-case to his green tunic, and stepped inside.

The clerk at the desk checked him through the usual security ID procedures without comment. It was all very routine. He left his coat—which had never come from any military store, but instead had been tailor-made to fit his very nonstandard size—in the checkroom. It was a measure of his security clearance that he was sent off without an escort to find his own way to Illyan's not-very-accessible office. You had to go up two different lift tubes and down a third to get to that floor.

Once he'd arrived, and passed through the last scanner in the corridor, he found the door of the outer office open. Illyan's secretary was at his desk, talking with General Lucas Haroche, Head of Domestic Affairs. The general's title always put Miles in mind of a gigolo for bored wives, but in fact it was one of the nastier and more thankless jobs in the service, tracking would-be treason plots and antigovernment groups strictly on the Barrayaran side. His counterpart General Allegre had the full-time task of doing the same for restive, conquered Komarr.

Miles usually dealt with the Head of Galactic Affairs (a much more exotic and evocative title, in Miles's opinion) on the rare occasions when he didn't deal with Illyan directly. But the G.A. was stationed on Komarr, and Miles had been routed straight back to Barrayar this time without stopping at the planet that guarded Barrayar's only jump-point gateway to the wormhole nexus. One must assume it's urgent. Maybe it would even be urgent enough to divert Illyan's negative attentions from Miles's bad news.

"Hello, Captain. Hello, General Haroche." As the supposedly junior officer present, Miles greeted them both with a vaguely directed salute, which they returned as casually. Miles did not know Illyan's secretary well; the man had held this critical position for about two years, which gave Miles at least six years seniority on him as an Illyan-satellite, if one wanted to think of it in those terms.

The secretary held out his hand for the cipher-case. "Your report, good. Sign it in, please."

"I ... sort of wanted to hand this one to the boss personally." Miles nodded to Illyan's closed inner door.

"Can't, today. He's not in."

"Not in? I expected . . . there were some things I needed to add verbally."

"I'll pass them on for you, as soon as he gets back."

"Will he be back soon? I can wait."

"Not today. He's out of town."

Shit. "Well . . ." Reluctantly, Miles handed over the case to its proper recipient, and pressed his palm four times to the comconsole's read-pad to affirm and document delivery. "So . . . did he leave any orders for me? He must have known when I would arrive."

"Yes, Lieutenant. You are to take leave until he calls you in."

"I thought this was urgent, or why rush me home on the first ship? I've just had several weeks of time off, cooped up on board."

"What can I say?" The secretary shrugged. "Occasionally, ImpSec remembers it is the military. Hurry up and wait."

Miles would get no unauthorized information out of him. But if there was that much time ... his clever little plan to skin off to Escobar for secret treatment, so recently suppressed, reared up out of the mire again. "Leave, huh? Do I have time and permission to visit my parents on Sergyar?"

"I'm afraid not. You are to hold yourself ready to report back here on a one-hour notice. You'd better not depart the city." At Miles's dismayed look, he added, "Sorry, Lieutenant Vorkosigan."

Not half as sorry as I am. He was put forcibly in mind of his own sententious motto about no battle plan surviving first contact with the enemy. "Well . . . tell Illyan I'd like to see him, at his earliest convenience."

"Of course." The secretary made a note.

"And how are your parents, Lieutenant Vorkosigan?" inquired General Haroche cordially. Haroche was a graying man of fifty-odd, who wore slightly rumpled undress greens. Miles liked Haroche's voice, which was deep and rich and sometimes humorous, with a faint provincial accent from the western districts that his years in the capital hadn't quite smoothed away. Haroche's work had gained him a formidable reputation in ImpSec's inner circles, though it was practically unknown to outsiders, a dilemma Miles appreciated. He predated Miles as a fixture at ImpSec HQ by a year or so; but a decade in Haroche's job, Miles reflected, would give anybody gray hairs, and stomach trouble too.

"You probably have more recent information on them than I do, sir. I think my mail is chasing me back home from the drop at Galactic Affairs HQ on Komarr."

Haroche turned his hands palm-out, and shrugged. "No, not really. Illyan has split out Sergyar from my department, and created a separate Department for Sergyaran Affairs equal with the Komarran."

"Surely there's not that much for a separate department to do," said Miles. "The colony's less than thirty years old. The population isn't even up to a million yet,

"Just barely," put in the secretary.

Haroche smiled a bit grimly. "I thought it was premature, but what the illustrious Viceroy Count Vorkosigan requests . . . has a way of happening." He half-lidded his eyes, as if casting Miles a significant look.

Don't you give me that nepotism crap, Haroche. You know what my real work is. And how well I do it. "Sounds like another cushy ImpSec desk job to me. The colonists are too busy working their tails off to foment rebellion. Maybe I ought to apply for it."

"It's already been filled, I'm afraid. By Colonel Olshansky."

"Oh? I've heard he's a steady man. Sergyar is certainly in a critical strategic position in the wormhole nexus, but I thought that aspect came under Galactic Affairs. Illyan's looking to the future, I suppose." Miles sighed. "I guess I may as well go on home. The office can find me at Vorkosigan House, when it decides it wants me."

The secretary's lips stretched in a sinister smile. "Oh, we can find you wherever you are."

It was an ImpSec-ish in-joke. Miles laughed dutifully, and escaped.

Miles arrived at the last lift-tube foyer on the way back to the exit simultaneously with a captain in undress greens, a dark-haired, middle-aged fellow with intense, hooded, nutmeg-brown eyes and a fleshy blade of a nose sweeping down his roman profile: a familiar but entirely unexpected face.

"Duv Galeni!" said Miles. "What are you doing here?"

"Well, hello, Miles." Galeni smiled as much as Galeni ever smiled, a pleased grimace. He was a little older and a little thicker than when Miles had last seen him, but seemed relaxed and confident. "Working, of course. I requested reassignment here."

"Last we met you were doing that stint in counter-intelligence on Komarr. Is this a promotion? Did you develop a sudden hankering for desk work over field work? Did you come to bask in the somewhat radioactive glow from the centers of Imperial power?"

"All of the above, plus ..." Galeni glanced around, as if to be sure they were alone. What secret was so sensitive it must be whispered here, in the very center of the labyrinth? "There's this woman."

"Good God, that sounds like one of my cousin Ivan's lines. You, a woman, and what?"

"Don't you dare hoot at me. Don't you still have that, ah, enviable arrangement with the formidable Quinn?"

Miles controlled a wince, thinking of his and Quinn s last argument. "More or less." He had to get back and fix it with Quinn at his earliest opportunity. She'd relented enough to come to see him off at the Peregrine's shuttle hatch, but their good-byes had been formal and strained.

"There you go," said Galeni tolerantly. "She's a Komarran. From the Toscane family. After she took a doctoral degree in business theory on Komarr, she went into the family transhipping concern. She's now stationed in Vorbarr Sultana as a permanent lobbyist with the trade group representing all the Komarran shipping concessions, as sort of an interface between them and the Imperium. A brilliant woman."

Coming from Galeni, who'd taken an academic doctorate in history himself before becoming one of the first Komarrans ever admitted to the Imperial military service, this was high praise. "So . . . are you romancing her, or thinking of hiring her for your department?"

Miles swore Galeni almost blushed. "This is serious, Vorkosigan."

"Ambitious, too. If she's a scion of those Toscanes."

"I was a scion of those Galens, once. Back when the Galens rated that particular inflection."

"Thinking of rebuilding the family fortunes, are you?"

"Mm . . . times have changed. And they aren't changing back. But they are changing onward. It's time for a little ambition in my life, I think. I'm almost forty, you know."

"And tottering on the brink of complete decrepitude, obviously." Miles grinned. "Well, congratulations. Or should I say, good luck?"

"I'll take the luck, I believe. Congratulations are still premature. But they will be in order soon, I hope. And you?"

My love-life is entirely too complicated at the moment. Or at any rate . . . Admiral Naismith's is. "Oh! You mean, work. I'm, ah ... not working, at present. I just got back from a little galactic tour."

Galeni twitched an eyebrow in understanding; his own encounter several years past with the Dendarii mercenaries and "Admiral Naismith" was certainly still vivid in his memory. "Are you headed up and in, or down and out?"

Miles pointed to the down tube. "I'm headed home. I have a few days leave."

"Maybe I'll see you around town, then." Galeni swung into the down tube, and rendered Miles a cheerful parting semi-salute.

"I hope so. Take care." Miles descended in turn, exiting at the ground floor.

At the side entrance's security desk, Miles paused in a minor dilemma. Every time he'd ever gone home after a final ImpSec mission debriefing, he'd either called for a car from the Counts garage, driven by an Armsman or servant, or more often found one waiting for him when he emerged from Illyan's lair. But Armsmen, servants, vehicles, and all the rest of the household had decamped with the Count and Countess for the Viceroys Palace on Sergyar (though his mother had written him dryly that the term "palace" was most misleading). So should he requisition a ride from ImpSec HQ's motor pool? Or order a commercial cab? Though one might be certain that any cab which came here had been vetted by Security first. He'd sent his sparse luggage directly home from the shuttleport.

It was chill and gray out, but not raining. And he'd just spent a great many days stuck aboard a decidedly cramped (if fast) jump-ship. He collected his greatcoat and stepped outside. He was only under orders to keep a bodyguard on duty at all times during his galactic travels, after all.

It was about four kilometers from ImpSec HQ to Vorkosigan House, both centrally located in the Old Town. I do believe I'll walk home.

He turned the last corner onto the street Vorkosigan House faced just as the gray afternoon darkened into drizzle, and congratulated himself on his timing. Four kilometers in ... well, maybe it wasn't the  fastest time he'd ever done, but at least he wasn't gasping for breath as he would have been six months ago.

The brisk walk had been a ... nonevent. The streets of the central capital were thick with afternoon traffic and clogged with pedestrians, who hurried past on their various businesses, sparing barely a glance for the striding little man in military dress. No long stares, no rude gestures or comments, not even one covert old hex sign against mutation. Had getting rid of his uneven limp, leg braces, and most of the crookedness in his back made that much difference? Or was the difference in the Barrayarans?

Three old-style mansions had once shared the city block. For security reasons the one on this end had been bought up by the Imperium during the period Miles's father had been Regent, and now housed some minor bureaucratic offices. The one on the other end, more dilapidated and with bad drains, had been torn down and replaced only by a little park. In their day, a century and a half ago, the great houses must have loomed magnificently over the horse-drawn carriages and riders clopping past. Now they were overshadowed by taller modern buildings across the street.

Vorkosigan House sat in the center, set off from the street by a narrow green strip of lawn and garden in the loop of the semicircular drive. A stone wall topped with black wrought-iron spikes surrounded it all. The four stories of great gray stone blocks, in two main wings plus some extra odd architectural bits, rose in a vast archaic mass. All it needed was window slits and a moat. And a few bats and ravens, for decoration. Earth-descended bats were rare on Barrayar, as there were not enough earth-descended insects for them to eat, and the native creatures incorrectly called bugs were usually toxic when ingested. A force screen just inside the wall provided the real protection, and eliminated the romantic possibility of bats. A concrete kiosk beside the gate housed the gate guards; in the heyday of the Regency three full platoons of ImpSec guards had traded shifts around the clock, in posts all around the building and for several blocks beyond, watching the important government men hurry in and out.

Now there was one lone gate guard, a young ImpSec corporal who poked his head out the open door at the sound of Miles's steps, emerged, and saluted him. A new man, no one Miles recognized.

"Good afternoon, Lieutenant Vorkosigan," the young man said. "I was expecting you. They brought your valise a couple of hours ago. I scanned it and everything; it's ready to go in."

"Thank you, Corporal." Gravely, Miles returned his salute. "Been any excitement around here lately?"

"Not really, sir. Not since the Count and Countess left. About the most action we've had was the night a feral cat somehow got past the scanner beams and ran into the tangle-field. I never knew cats could make such a racket. She apparently thought she was about to be killed and eaten."

Miles's eye took in an empty sandwich wrapper on the floor, shoved against the far wall, and a small saucer of milk. A flicker of light from the banks of vid displays for the perimeter monitors in the kiosks second tiny room cast a chilly glow through the narrow doorway. "And, er . . . was she? Killed, I mean."

"Oh, no, sir. Fortunately."

"Good." He retrieved his valise, after an awkward scramble with the guard as he belatedly tried to hand it to Miles. From the shadows under the guards chair beside the saucer, a pair of yellow-green eyes glinted in feline paranoia at him. The young corporal had an interesting collection of long black cat hairs decorating the front of his uniform, and deep half-healed scratches scoring his hands. Keeping pets on duty was highly un-regulation. Nine hours a day stuck in this tiny bunker ... he must be bored out of his mind.

"The palm-locks have all been reset for you, sir," the guard went on helpfully. "I've rechecked everything. Twice. Can I carry that for you? Do you know how long you will be here? Will there be anything . . . going on?"

"I don't know. I'll let you know." The kid was clearly longing for a little conversation, but Miles was tired. Maybe later. Miles turned to trudge up the drive, but then turned back. "What did you name her?"

"Sir?"

"The cat."

A look of slight panic crossed the young man's face, as that regulation about pets no doubt recalled itself to his mind. "Er . . . Zap, sir."

He was honest, at least. "How appropriate. Carry on, Corporal." Miles gave him a parting ImpSec HQ Analyst's salute, which was a sort of wave of two fingers in the general vicinity of one's temple; ImpSec analysts tended not to have a great deal of respect for anyone whose measured IQ was lower than their own, which included most of the rest of the Imperial Service. The guard returned a snappier grateful version.

When did ImpSec start sending us children for gate guards? The grim men who'd patrolled the place in Miles s father's day would have executed the unfortunate cat on the spot, and sifted its remains for scanning devices and bombs afterwards. The kid must be all of... at least twenty-one years old, if he's ImpSec and that rank in the capital. Miles controlled a slight twinge of disassociation, and strode up the drive and under the porte cochere, out of the drizzle that was becoming outright rain.

He pressed the palm-lock pad to the right of the front door; its two halves swung out with stately grace to admit him, and closed again behind him as he stepped across the threshold. It felt quite odd, to open the door himself; there had always been a Vorkosigan Armsman in the House uniform of brown and silver on duty to admit him. When did they automate that door?

The great entry hall with its black-and-white paved floor was chill and shadowy, as the rain and gloom of early evening leached away the light. Miles almost spoke, Lights!, to bring up the illumination, but paused, and set down his valise. In his whole life, he'd never had Vorkosigan House entirely to himself.

"Someday, my son, all this will be yours," he whispered experimentally into the shadows. The hard-edged echo of his words seemed to rasp back up from the tessellated pavement. He suppressed a slight shudder. He turned to the right, and began a slow tour of the premises.

The carpet in the next room muffled the lonely clump of his boots. All the remaining furniture—about half seemed to be missing—was covered with ghostly white sheeting. He circled the entire first floor. The place seemed both larger and smaller than he'd remembered, a puzzling paradox.

He checked out the garage occupying the whole eastern wing's sub-basement level. His own lightflyer was tucked neatly into a corner. A barge of an armored groundcar, polished and luxurious but elderly, occupied another. He thought of his combat armor. I probably ought not to attempt to drive or fly, either, till this damned glitch in my head gets straightened out. In the lightflyer, he risked killing himself in a seizure; in the land-barge, anyone else on the road. Last winter, before he'd convinced himself that he was healing as promised, he'd gotten really good at apparently casually cadging rides.

He ascended one of the back stairways to the huge kitchen on the lower level. It had always been a lucrative locale for treats and company when he was a child, full of interesting, busy people like cooks and Armsmen and servants, and even an occasional hungry Imperial Regent, wandering through looking for a snack. Some utensils remained, but the place had been stripped of food, nothing left in the pantries or the walk-in freezer or refrigerators, which were tepid and disconnected.

He reset the smallest refrigerator. If he was going to be here very long, he would have to get food. Or a servant. One servant would certainly do. Yet he didn't want a stranger in here . . . maybe one of the recently pensioned folks lived in retirement nearby, and might be persuaded to come back for a few days. But he might not be here very long. Maybe he would buy some ready-meals—not military service issue, thank you. There was an impressive amount of wine and spirits left to age undisturbed in the climate-controlled cellar, the lock of which opened to his Vorkosigan palm. He brought up a couple of bottles of a particularly chewy red, laid down in his grandfathers day.

Not troubling to switch on the lift-tube, he hauled both bottles and the valise up the curving stairs to his third-floor bedroom in the side wing, which overlooked the back garden. This time he called up the lights, as true night was lending more danger than melancholy angst to his stumbling around in the dark. The chamber was exactly as he'd left it ... only four months ago? Too neat and tidy; no one had really lived here for a long time. Well, Lord Vorkosigan had dragged in for a good period last winter, but he hadn't been in condition then to make many waves.

I could order in some food. Split it with the gate guard. But he really didn't feel that hungry.

I could do anything I wanted. Anything at all.

Except for the one and only thing he did want, which was to depart tonight aboard the fastest jump-ship available bound for Escobar, or some equally medically advanced galactic depot. He growled, wordlessly. What he did instead was unpack his valise and put everything neatly away, shed his boots and hang up his uniform, and shuck on some comfortable old ship-knits.

He sat on his bed and poured some wine into his bathroom tumbler. He'd avoided alcohol and every other possible drug or druglike substance all the way out to that last mission with the Dendarii; it seemed not to have made any difference to the rare and erratic seizures. If he stayed here quietly alone inside Vorkosigan House until his meeting with Illyan, if an episode occurred again at least no one could witness it.

I'll have a drink, then order some food. Tomorrow, he must form another plan of attack on the . . . the damned saboteur lurking in his neurons.

The wine slid down smoky, rich, and warming. Self-sedation seemed to require more alcohol than it used to, a problem easily remedied; the desensitization might be yet another side effect of the cryo-revival, but he was glumly afraid it was simply due to age. He slipped into sleep about two-thirds through the bottle.

By noon the next day the problem of food was becoming acute, despite a couple of painkillers for breakfast, and the absence of coffee and tea turning downright desperate. I'm ImpSec trained. I can figure out this problem. Somebody must have been going for groceries all these years . . . no, come to think of it, kitchen supplies had been delivered daily by a lift-van; he remembered the Armsmen inspecting it. The chief cook had practically had the duties of a company quartermaster, handling the nutritional logistics of Count, Countess, a couple dozen servants, twenty Armsmen, an assortment of their dependents, peckish ImpSec guards not above cadging a snack, and frequent State dinners, parties, or receptions where guests might number in the hundreds.

The comconsole in the cook's cubicle off the kitchen soon yielded up the data Miles sought. There had been a regular supplier—the account was now closed, but he could surely open it again. Their list of offerings was astonishing in its scope, their prices even more so. How many marks had they been paying for eggs?—oh. That was twelve dozen eggs to a crate, not twelve eggs. Miles tried to imagine what he could do with a hundred and forty-four eggs. Maybe back when he'd been thirteen years old. Some opportunities just came too late in life. Instead he turned to the vid directory. The closest purveyor was a small midtown grocery about six blocks away. Another quandary: dare he drive? Walk there. Take a commercial cab home.

The place turned out to be an odd little hole in the wall, but it supplied coffee, tea, milk, a reasonable number of eggs, a box of instant groats, and an array of prepackaged items labeled Reddi-Meals! He stacked up two of each of the five flavors. On impulse, he also snagged a half-dozen foil packets of expensive squishy cat food, the smelly stuff cats liked. So ... should he slip it to the gate guard? Or attempt to seduce Zap the Cat to his own following? After the incident with the tangle-field, the beast probably would not be hanging around the back door of Vorkosigan House much.

He gathered up his spoils and took them to the checkout, where the clerk looked him up and down and gave him a peculiar smile. He braced himself inwardly for some snide remark, Ah, mutant? He should have worn his ImpSec uniform; nobody dared sneer at that Horus-eye winking from his collar. But what she said was, "Ah. Bachelor?"

His return home and mid-afternoon breakfast occupied another hour. Five hours till dark. More hours till bedtime. It did not take nearly all that time to look up every cryo-neurology clinic and specialist on Barrayar, and arrange the list in two orders; medical reputation, and the probability of keeping his visit secret from ImpSec. That second requirement was the sticking point. He really didn't want any but the best messing around with his head, but the best were going to be depressingly hard to convince to, say, treat a patient and keep no records. Escobar? Barrayar? Or should he wait until he got out on his next galactic mission assignment, as far from HQ as possible?

He paced the house, restlessly, turning over memories in his mind. This had been Elena's room. That tiny chamber had belonged to Armsman Bothari, her father. Here was where Ivan had slipped through the safety-railing, fallen half a story, and cut his head open, with no discernible effects on his intellect. It had been hoped the fall would make him smarter. . . .

For his evening meal, Miles decided to keep up the standards. He donned his dress greens, pulled all the covers off the furniture in the State dining room, and set up his wine with a proper crystal glass at the head of the meters-long table. He almost hunted up a plate, but reflected he could save the washing up by eating the Reddi-Meal! out of its packet. He piped in soft music. Other than that, dinner took about five minutes. When he'd finished, he dutifully put the covers back on the polished wood and fine chairs.

If I'd had the Dendarii here, I could have had a real party.

Elli Quinn. Or Taura. Or Rowan Durona. Or even Elena, Baz and all. Bel Thorne, whom he still missed. All of the above. Somebody. The inner vision of the Dendarii occupying Vorkosigan House gave him vertigo, but there was no doubt they'd know how to liven the place up.

By the next evening, he was desperate enough to call his cousin Ivan.

Ivan answered his comconsole promptly enough. Lieutenant Lord Ivan Vorpatril was still wearing undress greens, identical to Miles's except for the symbol of Ops instead of ImpSec pinned to his collar in front of the red lieutenants rectangles. At least Ivan hadn't changed, still holding down the same desk at Imperial Service headquarters by day, and leading the pleasant life of a Vor officer in the capital by night.

Ivan's handsome, affable face brightened into a genuine smile when he saw Miles. "Well, coz! I didn't know you were back in town."

"I got in a few days ago," Miles confessed. "I've been sampling the somewhat bizarre sensations of having Vorkosigan House to myself."

"Dear God, you're all alone in that mausoleum?"

"Except for the gate guard, and Zap the Cat, who keep to themselves."

"It ought to suit you, back from the dead as you are," said Ivan.

Miles touched his chest. "Not really. I never noticed before how much the old place creaks at night. I spent this afternoon . . ." He couldn't very well tell Ivan he'd spent the day plotting a secret medical foray without Ivan asking why, he continued smoothly, "looking through the archives. I got to wondering how many people had actually died on the premises, over the centuries. Besides my grandfather, of course. There were a lot more than I'd thought." A fascinating question, actually; he would have to scan the archives.

"Yech."

"So . . , what's happening in Town? Any chance of you stopping by?"

"I'm on duty all day, of course . . . there's not too much going on, really. We're at that odd cusp, done with the Emperor's Birthday and not time yet for Winterfair."

"How was the Birthday bash this year? I just missed it. I was still en route, three weeks out. Nobody even got drunk to celebrate."

"Yes, I know. I got stuck delivering your District's bag of gold. It was the usual crush. Gregor retired early, and things sort of trickled off to nothing before dawn." Ivan pursed his lips, looking like he was being seized with a bright idea. Miles braced himself.

"I tell you what, though. In two nights Gregor is having a State dinner. There's two or three major new galactic ambassadors, and a couple of minor counsels, who've presented their portfolios in the last month, and Gregor figured to round them up all at once and get it over with. As usual, Mother is playing hostess for him."

Lady Alys Vorpatril was widely acknowledged as the premier social arbiter of Vorbarr Sultana, not least because of her frequent duties at the Imperial Residence as official welcomer for wifeless, motherless, sisterless Emperor Gregor.

"There's going to be dancing, after. Mother asked me if I couldn't round up some younger people to warm up the ballroom. By younger I gather she means under forty. Appropriate ones, you know the drill. If I had known you were in town, I'd have nailed you before this."

"She wants you to bring a date," Miles interpreted this. "Preferably, a fiancee."

Ivan grinned. "Yeah, but for some reason most fellows I know won't lend me theirs."

"Would I be supposed to provide a dance partner too? I hardly know any women here anymore."

"So, bring one of the Koudelka girls. I am. Sure, it's like taking your sister, but they are decorative as hell, especially en masse."

"Did you ask Delia?" said Miles thoughtfully.

"Yeah. But I'll cede her to you if you like, and take Martya. But if you're escorting Delia, you have to promise not to make her wear high heels. She hates it when you make her wear high heels."

"But she's so ... impressive in them."

"She's impressive out of them, too."

"True. Well . . . yes, all right." Miles entertained a brief flashing vision of himself having a seizure right on the Imperial ballroom floor, in front of half the Vorish social cream of the capital. But what was the alternative? Stay home by himself yet another night with nothing to do but dream about his after-the-next-mission escape to Escobar, evolve nineteen more impractical ways to defeat ImpSec s observation of him on ImpSec's home turf, or brainstorm how to steal the gate guard's cat for company? And Ivan might solve his transportation dilemma.

"I don't have a car," Miles said.

"What happened to your lightflyer?"

"It's ... in the shop. Adjustments."

"Want me to pick you up?"

His brains were lagging. That would leave Ivan driving, to the terror of all prudent passengers, unless Miles could bully Delia Koudelka into taking over. Miles sat up, seized with a bright idea of his own. "Does your mother really want extra bodies?"

"She says so."

"Captain Duv Galeni is in town. I saw him the other day at ImpSec HQ. He's stuck down in the Analysis section, except that he seems to regard it as a rare treat."

"Oh, yeah, I knew that! I would have remembered to tell you eventually. He came over to our side of town a few weeks ago in tow of General Allegre, for some consultation by the upper-ups. I meant to do something to welcome him to Vorbarr Sultana, but I hadn't got around to it yet. You ImpSec boys tend to keep to yourselves over there in Paranoia Central."

"But anyway, he's trying to impress this Komarran girl," Miles forged on. "Not girl, woman I suppose, some kind of high-powered wheel in a trade delegation. She's strong on brains rather than beauty, I gather, which doesn't surprise me, knowing Galeni. And she has interesting Komarran connections. How many points d'you think he would score for getting her into an Imperial State dinner?"

"Many," said Ivan decisively. "Especially if it's one of my mother's exclusive little soirees."

"And we both owe him one."

"More than one. And he's not nearly as sarcastic as he used to be, either, I noticed. Maybe he's mellowing out. Sure, invite him along," said Ivan.

"I'll give him a call, and get back to you, then." Happy in his inspiration, Miles cut the com.

CHAPTER FIVE

Miles climbed from Captain Galeni's groundcar, which was stopped at the east portico of the Imperial Residence, and turned to assist Delia Koudelka, who scarcely needed help. She swung out her long athletic legs, and bounced to her feet. The flowing skirts of her dress, in her favorite blue, revealed a glimpse of her matching dancing slippers, sensible, comfortable, and flat. She was the tallest of Commodore Koudelka's four daughters; the top of Miles s head was a good ten centimeters below the level of her shoulder. He grinned up at her. She returned a somewhat twisted smile, companionable and sporting.

"I don't know why I let you and Ivan talk me into this," she sighed to his ear.

"Because you like to dance," Miles stated with certainty. "Give me the first two, and I promise I'll find you a nice tall galactic diplomat for the rest of the evening."

"It's not that," she denied, eyeing his shortness.

"What I lack in height, I make up in speed."

"That's the trouble." She nodded vigorously.

Galeni turned over his modest vehicle to the waiting Imperial servant, who drove it away, and arranged his own lady's hand upon his arm. It took some knowledge of Galeni to read his saturnine features; Miles made him out as a little proud, a little smug, and a little embarrassed, as a man who arrives at a party wildly overdressed. Since Galeni, albeit almost painfully neat, scrubbed, shaved, and polished, wore the same dress green Service uniform with glittering insignia as Miles did, it could only be the effect of his companion.

He ought to be smug, thought Miles. Wait'll Ivan sees this.

If Laisa Toscane possessed more brains than beauty, she had to be some kind of genius. Yet the exact source of her intense physical impression was elusive. Her face was softly molded and pleasant, but not nearly as striking as, say, Elli Quinn's expensive sculpture. Her eyes were unusual, a brilliant blue-green, though whether the color was cosmetically or genetically conferred Miles could not tell. She was short even for a Komarran woman, two handspans shorter than Galeni, who was almost as tall as Delia. But her most distinctive feature was her skin, milk-white and almost seeming to glow—zaftig, Miles thought, was the word for that rich flesh. Plump was misleading, and not nearly enthusiastic enough. He had never seen anything so edibly female outside a Cetagandan haut-lady's force screen.

Wealth did not always confer taste upon its possessor, but when it did, the results could be impressive. She wore dark red, loose trousers in the Komarran style and a matching, low-cut top, made subtle with a boxy open jacket in cream and blue-green. Understated jewelry. Her hair was too dark to be called blond, too silvery to be called brown, and curled in short wisps in a forthrightly Komarran fashion. Her smile seemed pleased and excited, as she glanced up at her escort, but by no means overwhelmed. If she makes it past Aunt Alys, Miles decided, she's going to do just fine. He lengthened his stride to match Delia's, and bowed his little party indoors, as if Emperor Gregor's State dinner was his personal gift to them.

They were vetted through by the Imperial guards, and a majordomo who determined that they had no wraps to be relieved of, nor, under Miles's escort, further need of guidance. The next person they encountered was indeed Lady Alys Vorpatril, who stood at the foot of the staircase. Tonight she'd chosen a gown of dark blue velvet trimmed with gold, in salute perhaps to the Vorpatril colors of her long-deceased husband. She'd worn a widow's dove gray all through Miles's childhood, he seemed to recall, but had at length given it up, possibly about the same time she had finally forgiven Lord Vorpatril for getting himself killed in that particularly outrageous fashion during the War of Vordarian's Pretendership.

"Hello, Miles dear, Delia," she greeted them. Miles bowed over her hand, and introduced Captain Galeni and Dr. Toscane with more formality. Lady Alys nodded approval—Miles was relieved that Ivan had indeed followed through and arranged their addition to the guest list as promised, and not forgotten till some embarrassing last minute, or later. "Gregor is receiving everyone in the Glass Hall as usual," Lady Alys went on. "You'll be seated at his table for dinner, down from the Escobaran Ambassador and her husband—I thought we ought to intersperse the galactics with a few natives this time."

"Thanks, Aunt Alys." Miles glanced past her shoulder at a slight, familiar figure in officers dress greens, standing in the shadows in the door to the left of the staircase and talking in low tones with an ImpSec guard. "Uh, Delia, would you show Duv and Laisa to the Glass Hall? I'll be right along."

"Sure, Miles." Delia smiled at Laisa, swept up her long skirts with the ease of practice, and led the Komarrans up the wide stairs.

"What a lovely young woman," stated Lady Alys, gazing after them.

"Ah, you mean Dr. Toscane?" Miles hazarded. "She was all right to bring, I take it."

"Oh, yes.  She is the principal heiress of those Toscanes, you know. Quite appropriate," Alys spoiled this encomium somewhat by adding, "for a Komarran."

We all have our little handicaps. Lady Alys was employed by the Emperor to see that the Right people were admitted; but Miles had spotted the other member of the team, the man Gregor employed to see that the Safe people were admitted. Chief of Imperial Security Simon Illyan glanced up at last from his conversation with the ImpSec guard, who saluted him and disappeared through the doorway. Illyan did not smile or beckon Miles, but Miles ducked around Lady Alys and made for him anyway, trapping him before he could follow the guard.

"Sir." Miles gave him an analysts salute; Illyan returned an even more modified version, a slightly frustrated wave more repelling than acknowledging. The ImpSec chief was a man in his early sixties, with brown hair going gray, a deceptively placid face, and a permanent habit of blending quietly into the background. Illyan was clearly on duty tonight supervising the Emperors personal security, evidenced by the comm link earbug in his right ear and the charged lethal weapons on both hips. This meant either that there was more going on here tonight than Miles had been briefed about, or that there wasn't much going on anywhere else to nail Illyan down at HQ, and he'd left the routine to his bland and steady second-in-command Haroche. "Did your secretary give you my message, sir?"

"Yes, Lieutenant."

"He'd told me you were out of town."

"I was. I came back."

"Have you . . . seen my latest report?"

"Yes."

Damn. The words, There's something important I left out of it seemed to choke in Miles's throat. "I need to talk with you."

Illyan, always closed, seemed more expressionless than usual. "This is neither the time nor the place, however."

"Quite, sir. When?"

"I'm waiting on further information."

Right. If it wasn't hurry up and wait, it was wait and hurry up. But something must be about to break soon, or Illyan wouldn't have Miles dancing attendance in Vorbarr Sultana on a one-hour report-for-duty notice. If it's a new mission, I wish to hell he'd let me in on it. I could at least be starting some contingency planning. "Very good. I'll be ready."

Illyan nodded dismissal. But as Miles turned away, he added, "Lieutenant ..."

Miles turned back.

"Did you drive here tonight?"

"Yes. Well, Captain Galeni did."

"Ah." Illyan seemed to find something mildly interesting to look at over the top of Miles s head. "Sharp man, Galeni."

"I think so." Giving up on prying anything further out of Illyan tonight, Miles hurried to catch up with his friends.

He found them all waiting for him in the broad corridor outside the Glass Hall; Galeni was chatting amiably with Delia, who seemed in no hurry to go in and find Ivan and her sister. Laisa was gazing around with obvious fascination at the handmade antiques and subtly colored patterned carpets lining the corridor. Miles strolled along with her to study the elaborate and painstaking inlay on a polished tabletop, a scene of running horses in the natural hues of the various woods.

"It's all so very Barrayaran," she confided to Miles.

"Does it meet your expectations?"

"Indeed, yes. How old do you suppose that table is—and what went through the mind of the craftsman who made it? Do you suppose he ever imagined us, imagining him?" Her sensitive-looking fingers ran over the polished surface, aromatic with fine scented wax, and she smiled.

"About two hundred years, and no, at a guess," said Miles.

"Hm." Her smile grew more pensive. "Some of our domes are over four hundred years old. And yet Barrayar seems older, even when it isn't. There is something intrinsically archaic about you, I think."

Miles reflected briefly upon the nature of her home-world. In another four hundred years, the terraforming on Komarr might begin to make it habitable for humans outdoors without breath masks. For now, the Komarrans lived all together in domed arcologies, as dependent upon their technology for survival against the choking chill as the Betans were on their screaming hot desert world. Komarr had never had a Time of Isolation, never been out of touch with the galactic mainstream. Indeed, it made its living fishing out of that stream, with its one vital natural resource—six important wormhole jump points in close practical proximity to one another. The jumps had made Komarran local space a nexus crossroads, and eventually, unfortunately, a strategic target. Barrayar had exactly one wormhole jump route connecting it to the galactic nexus—and it went through Komarr. If you did not hold your own gateway, those who did control it would own you.

Miles pulled his thoughts back to a smaller and more private human scale. Obviously, Galeni ought to take his lady out in the open Barrayaran air. She'd surely enjoy all those kilometers of un-Komarran wilderness. Hiking, say, or, if she truly favored the archaic—

"You ought to get Duv to take you horseback riding," Miles suggested.

"Goodness. Can he ride, too?" Her amazing turquoise eyes widened.

"Er ..." Good question. Well, if not, Miles could give him a crash course. "Sure."

"Intrinsically archaic seems so . . ." She dropped her voice to a secretive tone—"intrinsically romantic. But don't tell Duv I said so. He's such a stickler for historical accuracy. The first thing he does is blow off all the fairy dust."

Miles grinned. "I'm not surprised. But I thought you were the practical businesswoman type, yourself."

Her smile grew more serious. "I'm a Komarran. I have to be. Without the value-added, from our trade, labor, transport, banking, and remanufacturing, Komarr would dwindle again to the desperate subsistence—and less-than-subsistence—level from which it rose. And seven out of ten of us would die, one way or another."

Miles twitched an interested brow; he thought her figures exaggerated, if obviously sincerely felt. 'Well, we shouldn't hold up the parade. Shall we go in?"

He and Galeni rearranged themselves at the sides of their respective ladies, and Miles led the way through the nearby double doors. The Glass Hall was a long reception chamber lined on one side with tall windows, on the other with tall antique mirrors, hence its name, acquired when glass was a lot harder to come by.

Playing host rather than liege lord tonight, Gregor stood near the door in company with a few high government Ministers roped in for the occasion, greeting his guests. The Emperor of Barrayar was a lean, almost thin man in his mid-thirties, black-haired and dark-eyed. Tonight he wore well-cut civilian clothes, in the most conservative formal Barrayaran style, with a hint of the Vorbarra colors in the trim and side-piping on the trousers. Gregor was preternaturally quiet by choice when permitted to be. Not now, of course, when he was in Social Mode, a duty he disliked but, as with all his duties, did well anyway.

"Is that him?" Laisa whispered to Miles, as they waited for the group ahead of them to finish their pleasantries and move on. "I thought he would be in that fantastical military uniform one sees him wearing in all the vids."

"Oh, the parade red-and-blues? He only puts them on for the Midsummer Review, Birthday, and Winterfair. His grandfather Emperor Ezar was a real general before he was ever Emperor, and wore uniforms like a second skin, but Gregor feels he never was, despite his titular command of the Imperial forces. So he goes for his Vorbarra House uniform or something like this whenever etiquette permits. We all appreciate it vastly, because it lets us off the hook for wearing the damned things. The collar chokes you, the swords trip you, and the boot tassels catch on things." Not that the collar of the dress greens was much lower, and except for the tassels the tall boots were similar, but at his height Miles found the long sword of the pair a particular trial.

"I see," said Laisa. Her eyes twinkled in amusement.

"Ah. We're up." Miles shepherded his flock forward.

Delia had known Gregor all her life, and except for a brief word and smile of greeting stepped back to give the newcomers a chance.

"Yes, Captain Galeni, I've heard of you," Gregor said gravely, when Miles introduced the Komarran-born officer to him. Galeni looked for a split second as if he wasn't sure how to process this alarming tidbit of information, and Gregor added quickly, "Good things."

Gregor turned to Laisa, his gaze, for a moment, rather arrested. He recovered quickly, and bowed slightly over her hand, murmuring something polite and hopeful about Komarr as a welcome part of the Empires future.

Once through the formalities, Delia led off in a search for Ivan and her sister among the thinly scattered, brilliantly dressed guests. The room was not nearly so jammed as for the Birthday or Winterfair. Laisa glanced back over her shoulder at Gregor. "Heavens. I nearly felt he was apologizing for conquering us."

"Well, not really," said Miles. "We didn't have much choice, after the Cetagandans invaded us through you. He was merely expressing sorrow for any personal inconveniences it may have caused which, all things considered, seem to be tailing off, thirty-five years after the fact. Multi-planet empires are a tricky balancing act. Though the Cetagandans have managed theirs for centuries, not that they would be my first pick as political role models."

"He doesn't seem exactly the stern personality your official news services project, does he?"

"More glum than stern, really—that's just how he comes out on the vid. Fortunately, perhaps."

They found their way temporarily blocked by a skinny old man doddering along with a cane; his ultra-formal parade red-and-blues, correct right down to the two swords banging on his bony hips, hung loosely on him, and were oddly faded in color. Miles grabbed his guests and stepped back hastily to let him pass.

Laisa watched with interest. "Now who's the old General?"

"One of the most famous relics of Vorbarr Sultana," said Miles. "General Vorparadijs is the last surviving Imperial Auditor to have been personally appointed by Emperor Ezar."

"He looks rather military, for an auditor," said Laisa doubtfully.

"That's Imperial Auditor, with a capital A," Miles corrected. "And a capital Imp. Um . . . every society has to face the question, Who will guard the guardians? The Imperial Auditor is the Barrayaran-style answer. The Auditors are sort of a cross between, oh, a Betan Special Prosecutor, an Inspector General, and a minor deity.

"It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with accounting, though that's the origin of the title. The original counts were Voradar Tau's tax collectors. With that much money floating past my illiterate ancestors, they tended to grow sticky fingers. The Auditors policed the Counts for the Emperor. The unexpected arrival of an Imperial Auditor, usually with a large Imperial cavalry force, frequently triggered messy and unusual suicides. The Auditors used to get assassinated more in those days, too, but the early Emperors were really consistent in following those up with spectacular mass executions, and the Auditors became remarkably untouchable. It's said they used to be able to ride the countryside with bags of gold hanging off their saddles and almost no guards, and the bandits would secretly ride point to clear their paths, just to make sure the Auditors were sped out of their districts with no irritating delays. I think that's a legend, myself."

Laisa laughed. "It's a great story, though."

"There are supposed to be nine of them," put in Galeni. "A traditional number with several possible Old Earth origins. It's a favorite topic for undergraduate history papers. Though I believe there are only seven living Auditors at present."

"Are they appointed for life?" asked Laisa.

"Sometimes," said Miles. "Others are just appointed on a case-by-case basis. When my father was Regent, he only appointed acting Auditors, though Gregor confirmed several of their appointments when he reached his majority. In all matters pertaining to their investigations, they actually speak with the Emperors Voice. That's another very Barrayaran thing. I once spoke with the Count my Father's Voice, in a little murder investigation in my own District. It was a strange experience."

"It sounds really interesting, from a sociological view," said Laisa. "Do you suppose we could corner General Vorparadijs, and get him talking about old times?"

"No, no!" said Miles in horror. "It's the office that's interesting. Vorparadijs himself is the deadliest senile old Vor bore in Vorbarr Sultana. All he does is this monologue about how standards have gone to hell since Ezar's day," with pointed looks at me, usually, "interspersed with detailed accounts of his bowel troubles."

"Yes," agreed Delia Koudelka. "He interrupts you constantly to tell you Youth Have No Manners. Youth is anybody under sixty."

"Seventy," Miles corrected. "He still refers to my father as Tiotr's younger boy.'"

"Are all Auditors that old?"

"Well, not that old. But they tend to pick retired admirals and generals in case they have to put the wind up non-retired admirals and generals."

They avoided the deadly General, and caught up with Ivan and Martya Koudelka only to be parted from them again by the majordomo, who seated them for dinner in the ornate Lesser Dining Hall. The meal went well, Miles thought. Miles exerted himself to ask leading questions of the Escobaran ambassador, and to patiently endure the usual spate of inquiries about his famous father. Laisa, across from him, held her own in conversation with an elderly gentleman of the Escobaran s retinue. Gregor and Captain Galeni managed a few exquisitely polite exchanges about Barrayaran-Komarran relations suitable for the tender ears of galactic guests; it wasn't just for Miles's sake that they had been seated at Gregor's table, Miles judged.

Laisa's bright eyes rose at what Miles recognized was a straight-line about Komarran shipping deliberately handed her by Galeni. She addressed Gregor directly, across the Escobarans. "Yes, Sire. In fact, the Komarr Shippers' Syndicate, for which I work, is very concerned about the issue before the Council of Ministers right now. We've petitioned for tax relief on profits directly reinvested in capital improvements."

Inwardly, Miles applauded her nerve, to lobby the Emperor himself over the entree—Yeah, go for it! Why not?

"Yes," said Gregor, smiling a little. "Minister Racozy mentioned it to me. I'm afraid it will find stiff opposition in the Council of Counts, whose more conservative members feel our large military expenditures on Komarr's jump-point defenses should be, er, proportionally shared by those on the front lines."

"But capital growth will provide a much bigger base to tax on the next round. To siphon it off too soon is like . . . like eating your seed corn."

Gregor's brows rose. "An extremely useful metaphor, Dr. Toscane. I shall pass it on to Minister Racozy. It might make a better appeal to some of our backcountry Counts than the more complex discussions of jump technologies on which he's been attempting to tutor them."

Laisa smiled. Gregor smiled. Galeni looked downright smug. Laisa, having made her point, had the good sense to back off and turn the conversation immediately to lighter matters, or at least, to Escobaran policies on jump technologies, less potentially volatile than Barrayaran-Komarran taxation issues.

Music for the dancing afterwards in the ballroom downstairs was provided as usual by the Imperial Service Orchestra, surely among the less martial, if more talented, soldiers of Barrayar. The elderly colonel who directed them had been a fixture in the Imperial Residence for years. Gregor opened the dancing formally by taking Lady Alys for a spin around the floor, then, as etiquette demanded, a string of female guests in order of rank starting with the Escobaran ambassadoress. Miles claimed his two dances with the tall, blond, beautiful Delia. Having made whatever point that made to the onlookers, he went on to practice an Illyan-like blending with the walls to watch the show. Captain Galeni danced, if not well, at least earnestly. He had an eye on a political career after his twenty years in the Service were up, and was methodically collecting all possible pertinent skills.

One of Gregor's Armsmen approached Laisa; when Miles next spotted her, dipping and sliding in a mirror dance, she was opposite Gregor. Miles wondered if she'd get in a few more good lines about trade relations while she was at it. An exhilarating opportunity, and she wasn't wasting it; the Komarr Shippers' Syndicate should give her a bonus for this night's work. Glum Gregor actually laughed at something she said.

She returned to Galeni, temporarily holding up the wall along with Miles, with her eyes shining. "He's more intelligent than I imagined," she said breathlessly. "He listens . . . very intently. You feel as though he's taking it all in. Or is that an act?"

"No act," said Miles. "He's processing everything. But Gregor has to watch what he says very closely, given that his word can be literally law. He'd be shy if he could, but he's not allowed."

"Not allowed? How odd that sounds," said Laisa.

She had the chance to test Gregor's reserve three more times on the marquetry dance floor before the evening drew to a close at a proper and conservative hour before midnight. Miles wondered if Gregor was giving him the lie about his shyness, because he actually made Laisa laugh once or twice, too.

The party was breaking up before Miles finally found himself in Gregor's orbit for a quiet, private word. Unfortunately, the first thing Gregor said was, "I hear you managed to get Our courier back to Us almost in one piece. A bit below your usual standards, wasn't it?"

"Ah. So Vorberg's home, is he?"

"So I'm told. What exactly happened?"

"A ... very embarrassing accident with an automated plasma arc. I'll tell you all about it, but . . . not here."

"I look forward to it."

Which put Gregor on the growing list of people for Miles to try to avoid. Damn.

"Where did you find that extraordinary young Komarran woman?" Gregor added, gazing off into the middle distance.

"Dr. Toscane? Impressive, isn't she? I admired her courage as much as her cleavage. What all did you find to talk about out there?"

"Komarr, mostly . . . Do you have her, um, the Shippers' Syndicates address? Oh, never mind, Simon can get it for me. Along with a complete Security report, whether I want it or not, no doubt."

Miles bowed. "ImpSec lives to serve you, Sire."

"Behave," Gregor murmured. Miles grinned.

Upon their return to Vorkosigan House, Miles invited the two Komarrans in for a drink, before reflecting upon the present logistical complications of entertaining. Galeni started to politely decline, mentioning something about work tomorrow, but simultaneously Laisa said, "Oh, yes please. I'd love to see the house, Lord Vorkosigan. It's imbued with so much history." Galeni immediately swallowed whatever he'd been about to add, and followed her in, smiling slightly.

All the ground-floor rooms seemed too vast and shadowed and foreboding for just three people; Miles led them upstairs instead to a more humanly scaled small parlor, then had to zip around the room whisking the covers off the furniture before anyone could sit down. He set the lights to a reasonably romantic late-evening glow, then galloped downstairs again two and three flights respectively in search of three wineglasses and a suitable bottle of wine. He arrived back upstairs rather out of breath.

He returned to the small parlor to find Galeni had not taken advantage of his opportunity. Miles should have uncovered only the small sofa, forcing the two into closer proximity than the separate, admittedly comfortable, chairs they had chosen. Staid old rule-following Galeni seemed unconscious of his lady's secret yen for a little romantic idiocy. Miles was oddly reminded of Taura, forced by her size and work and rank into a permanent public persona too dangerous to mock. Laisa was not too big, but perhaps was too bright, too conscious of her public and social duties. She'd never ask directly. Galeni made her smile, but not laugh. The lack of any sense of play between them worried Miles. You had to have a keen sense of humor to do sex and stay sane.

But Miles did not feel particularly qualified just now to give Galeni advice on how to run his love-life. He thought again of Taura's comment: You try to give away what you want yourself. Hell. Galeni was a big boy, let him find his own damnation.

It wasn't hard to lead Laisa into conversation about her work, though it made things a little one-sided; Miles and Galeni naturally couldn't say much in return about their own highly classified business. This segued into what seemed to be the topic of the evening, Komarr-Barrayaran relations and history. The Toscane family had been notable cooperators after the conquest, hence their premier position today.

"But you can't," Miles maintained stoutly when the subject came up, "properly call them collaborators. I think that term ought to be reserved for those who cooperated before the Barrayaran invasion. No reflection upon the Toscanes' patriotism that they declined to embrace the scorched earth, or rather, scorched Komarr position of the later resistance. Quite the reverse." The Barrayaran invasion hadn't exactly been a win-win situation, but at least the cooperators had known how to cut their losses and go on. Now, a generation later, the success of the Toscane-led resurgent oligarchy demonstrated the validity of their reasoning.

And unlike Galeni, whose father Ser Galen had spent his life pursuing a futile Komarran revenge, the Toscane position had left Laisa with no embarrassing connections to live down. Ser Galen was a topic neither Miles nor Galeni broached; Miles wondered how much Galeni had told her of his late, mad father.

It was halfway between midnight and dawn, with another bottle of the best wine killed among them, before Miles could bring himself to let his yawning company go home. He watched reflectively as Galeni's groundcar turned out of the drive and down the night-quiet street, saluted on its way by the lone ImpSec night guard. Galeni, like Miles, had spent the last decade pursuing an all-consuming career; its secret strains had left him, perhaps, a bit romantically retarded. Miles hoped, when the time came, Galeni didn't put his proposal to Laisa as some sort of business proposition, but he was very much afraid that would be the only mode Galeni could allow himself. Galeni didn't have enough forward momentum. That desk job suited him.

That one won't be lingering for you very damned long, Galeni. Someone with more nerve will move in and snap her up, and carry her off to keep greedily for himself. As a would-be Baba, a traditional Barrayaran marriage-broker, Miles did not feel the evening had advanced Galeni's agenda nearly enough. Sexually frustrated enough by proxy for both his friends, Miles went back inside. The door secure-locked itself.

He undressed slowly, and sat on his bed, watching his comconsole with the same malignant intensity with which Zap the Cat eyed a human bearing food. It remained silent. Chime, damn you. In the natural perversity of things, this ought to be the hour Illyan called him in, when he was tired and half-drunk and unfit to report. Now, Illyan. I want my mission! Every hour that passed seemed a greater strain. Every hour, another hour wasted. If enough time went by before Illyan called him in that he might have made it to Escobar and back, he'd be fit to chew the carpet even when not having a seizure.

He considered hauling up another bottle, and getting really drunk, in an act of sympathetic magic to make Illyan really likely to call. But nausea and vomiting tended to make time move subjectively slower, not faster. An unattractive prospect. Maybe Illyan's forgotten me.

A thin joke; Illyan never forgot anything. He couldn't. Sometime back when he'd been an ImpSec lieutenant in his late twenties, then-Emperor Ezar had sent him off to distant Illyrica, to have an experimental eidetic memory-chip installed in his brain. Old Ezar had fancied owning a walking recording device answerable to himself alone. The technology had not caught on as a commercial development, due to the 90% incidence of iatrogenic schizophrenia the chip had subsequently induced in its wearers. Ruthless Ezar had been willing to take that 90% risk for the 10% reward, or rather, had been willing for a disposable young officer to take it for him. Ezar in pursuit of his policies had disposed of thousands of soldiers like Illyan, in his lifetime.

But Ezar had died soon after, and left Illyan, like a wandering planetoid, to fall into orbit around Admiral Aral Vorkosigan, who proved to be one of the major political stars of the century. Illyan had worked Security for Miles's father, one way or another, for the next thirty years.

Miles wondered what it would be like to have thirty-five years of memories at your beck and call, as sharp and instantaneous as if just experienced. The past would never be softened by that welcome roseate fog of forgetfulness. To be able to rerun every mistake you'd ever made, in perfect sound and color ... it had to be something like eternal damnation. No wonder the chip-bearers had gone mad. Although maybe remembering other people's mistakes was not so painful. You learned to watch your mouth, around Illyan. He could quote you back every idiotic, stupid, or ill-considered thing you'd ever said, verbatim, with gestures.

All in all, Miles didn't think he'd care for a chip, himself, even if he were medically qualified. He felt close enough to schizoid dementia already without any further technological boost in that direction, thanks.

Galeni, now, seemed the bland unimaginative sort who would qualify; but Miles had reason to believe Galeni harbored hidden depths, as hidden as his father Ser Galen's terrorist past. No. Galeni was not a suitable candidate either. Galeni would just go insane so quietly, he would rack up huge damages before anyone caught on.

Miles stared at his comconsole, willing it to light up. Call. Call. Call. Give me my goddamn mission. Get me out of here. Its silence seemed almost mocking. At length, he gave up and went to get another bottle of wine.

CHAPTER SIX

It was evening two full days later before the personal comconsole in his bedchamber chimed again. Miles, who had been sitting next to it all day, nearly flinched out of his chair. He let it chime again, deliberately, while he tried to slow his racing heart and catch his breath. Right. This has to be it. Cool, calm, and collected, boy. Don't let Illyan's secretary see you sweat.

But to his bitter disappointment, the face that formed over the vid plate was only his cousin Ivan. He'd obviously just blown in from his day's work at Imperial Service Headquarters, still wearing his undress greens . . . with blue, not red, rank rectangles on the collar behind his bronze Ops pins. Captain's tabs? Ivan is wearing captain's tabs?

"Hi, coz," said Ivan cheerily. "How was your day?"

"Slow." Miles fixed his features into a polite smile, hoping to conceal the sinking feeling in his gut.

Ivan's smile broadened; he ran a hand over his hair, preening. "Notice anything?"

You know damned well I noticed instantly. "You have a new hairstylist?" Miles feigned to hazard uncertainly.

"Ha." Ivan tapped a tab with a fingernail, making it click.

"You know, impersonating an officer is a crime, Ivan. True, they've never caught you yet. . . ." Ivan got promoted to captain before me . . . ?!

"Ha," Ivan repeated smugly. "It's all official, as of today. My new pay grade started at reveille this morning. I knew this was in the pipeline, but I've been sitting on the news. Thought you all deserved a little surprise."

"How come they promoted you before me? Who the hell have you been sleeping with?" boiled off Miles's lips before he could bite it back down. He hadn't meant his tone of voice to come out quite that harsh.

Ivan shrugged, smirking. "I do my job. And I do it without going around bending all the rules into artistic little origami shapes, either. Besides, you've spent I don't know how much time on medical leave. Deduct that, and I've probably got years of seniority on you."

Blood and bone. Every bit of that unwelcome leave had been bought with blood and bone and endless pain, laid down willingly enough in the Emperors service. Blood and bone and they promote Ivan? Before me . . . ?! Something like rage choked him, clotting words in his throat like cotton.

Ivan's face, watching his, fell. Yes, of course, Ivan had expected to be applauded, in some suitably backhanded way, expected Miles to share his pride and pleasure in his achievement, which truly made a sad dish when eaten alone. Miles struggled for better control of his face, his words, his thoughts. He tried to return his voice to the proper tone of light banter. "Congratulations, coz. Now that your rank and pay grade have become so exalted, what excuse are you going to give your mother not to get married to some fine Vor bud?"

"They have to catch me first," grinned Ivan, lightening again in response. "I move fast."

"Mm. Better not wait too long. Didn't Tatya Vorventa give up and get married recently? Though there's still Violetta Vorsoisson, I suppose."

"Well, no, actually, she got married last summer," Ivan admitted.

"Helga Vorsmythe?"

"Picked off by one of her Da's industrialist friends, of all things. He wasn't even Vor. Wealthy as hell, though. That was three years ago. God, Miles, you are out of it. No problem. I can always go for someone younger."

"At this rate, you're going to end up courting embryos." We all will. "That skewed male-female birth ratio about the time we were being born is catching up with us. Well, good going with your captaincy. I know you worked for it, even though you pretend not to. You'll be Chief of Ops before I turn around, I wager."

Ivan sighed. "Not unless they break down and finally give me some ship duty to go on my resume. They're awfully stingy with it, these days."

"They're pinching half-marks in the training cycles, I'm afraid. Everyone's complaining on that score."

"You've had more ship duty than anyone I know up to the rank of commodore, in your own inimitable, ass-backwards way," Ivan added enviously.

"Yeah, but it's all classified secret. You're among the very few who know."

"The point is, you haven't let the lack of half-marks stop you. Or the rules. Or respect for reality, as far as I can tell."

"I never let anything stop me. That's how you get what you want, Ivan. No one's just going to hand it to you." Well ... no one was going to just hand it to Miles. Things fell out of the sky onto Ivan, and had done so all his charmed life. "If you can't win, change the game."

Ivan twitched a brow upward. "If there's no game, isn't winning a pretty meaningless concept?"

Miles hesitated. "Out of the mouths of ... Ivans. I'll ... have to think about that one."

"Don't strain yourself, little genius."

Miles managed an unfelt smile. Ivan looked as though this whole conversation was leaving as bad a taste in his mouth as it was in Miles s. Better to cut the losses. He would make it up with Ivan later. He always did. "I think I'd better go now."

"Yes. You have so much to do." With a grimace, Ivan cut the com even as Miles's hand reached for the off-key.

Miles sat in his comconsole's station chair in silence, for a full minute. Then, being quite alone, he threw back his head and spat his frustration at his bedroom ceiling, in a string of all the blue galactic curses he knew. Afterwards, he felt slightly better, as if he'd managed to eject something poisonous from his soul along with the foul words. He didn't begrudge Ivan his promotion, not really. It was just ... it was just . . .

Was winning all he really wanted? Or did he still want also to be seen to have won? And by whom? ImpSec was the wrong damned department to be working for, if you hungered for fame along with your fortune. Yet Illyan knew, Miles's parents knew, Gregor, all the close people who really counted knew about Admiral Naismith, knew what Miles really was. Elena, Quinn, all the Dendarii. Even Ivan knew. Who the hell am I twirling for, if not for them?

Well . . . there was always his grandfather General Count Piotr Vorkosigan, dead these thirteen years. Miles's eye fell on his grandfather's ceremonial dagger in its elaborate sheath, sitting in a place of honor, or at least uncluttered by other detritus, on its own shelf across the room. Miles had actually insisted on carrying it around with him at all times, earlier in his career. Proving . . . what? To whom? Nothing to no one, now.

He rose, walked over to the shelf, and lifted the weapon, drawing the fine blade from its sheath and watching the light play over the textured steel. It was still a fabulous antique, but it lacked . . . some former geas it had once held upon him; the magic was gone, or at least, the curse was lifted. It was just a knife. He slid it back into its sheath, opened his hand, and let it fall back to its place.

He felt out of balance. He had felt that way increasingly, when at home, but this trip the sensation was acute. The strange absence of the Count and Countess was like a preview of their deaths. This was a taste of what it would be like to be Count Miles Vorkosigan, all day long. He wasn't sure he liked the flavor.

I need . . . Naismith. This eviscerated Vor life unnerved him. But Naismith was an expensive hobby. To get ImpSec to pay for Naismith required a reason, literally a mission in life. What have you done to justify your existence today? was a question to which Admiral Naismith had better be able to supply a daily answer, or risk being snuffed out. ImpSec's accountants were as dangerous to his continuation as enemy fire. Well . . . almost. His hand traced the spray of scars on his chest, under his shirt.

There was something wrong with his new heart. It pumped blood all right, all the ventricles and valves were in order ... it was supposed to have been grown from his own tissues, but it seemed a stranger's mismatch. . . . You're going looney, all alone in this empty house.

A mission. A mission was what he needed. Then everything would be all right again. It wasn't that he wished harm on anyone, but he longed for a hijacking, a blockade, a small colonial war . . . better still, a rescue. Free the prisoners, yeah.

You've done all that. If that's what you wanted, why aren't you happy?

The taste for adrenaline, it appeared, was an appetite that grew by what it fed upon. Naismith was an addiction, a craving that required ever-stronger and more toxic doses for the same level of satisfaction.

He'd tried a few dangerous sports, by way of experiment, to soothe that hunger. He wasn't all that good at them, lacking, among other things, the time to acquire true expertise. And besides . . . that extra edge was missing. It wasn't very interesting to risk only himself.

And a trophy seemed a tawdry bit of junk, when he'd played for and won ten thousand human lives in a single round.

I want my frigging mission. Call me, Illyan!

The call, when it came at last, literally caught him napping. The chime brought him abruptly out of an exhausted afternoon doze, after a night of almost no sleep at all, racked with circular patterns of worry and useless speculation. He had practiced in his mind, Miles estimated, about three hundred versions of his upcoming interview with Illyan. The only certainty he held was that the three hundred and first would be something totally different.

The face of Illyan s secretary formed over the vid plate. "Now?" Miles said, before the man could get his first word out. He rubbed his hand through sleep-bent hair, and over his slightly numb face.

The secretary blinked, cleared his throat, and started in with his own practiced sentences. "Good afternoon, Lieutenant Vorkosigan. Chief Illyan requests that you report to his office in one hour."

"I could make it quicker."

"One hour," the secretary repeated. "HQ will send a car for you."

"Oh. Thanks." Useless to ask for more information over a comconsole; Miles's machine was more secured than a commercial model, but not that much more.

The secretary cut the com. Well, it would give him time to take another cold shower, and dress properly. After his second bath of the day he pulled a set of fresh-pressed undress greens out of his closet, and set about transferring his ImpSec silver eyes to their place on the collar, in front of the—ahem!—battered red lieutenant's tabs he'd been wearing for eight bleeding years. The rank tabs were duplicates, but the eye-of-Horus pins, built up in molecular layers of tarnish-proof silver in a hidden pattern, were issued one set (right-and left-facing) to a soldier. Name and serial number were engraved on the back, and woe to the man who lost his. ImpSec eyes were as hard to counterfeit as money, and as powerful. When Miles was finished, his appearance was as neat as for any interview with the Emperor. Neater. Gregor had less immediate control over his destiny than Illyan did.

It was all sympathetic magic. When you couldn't do something truly useful, you tended to vent the pent-up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing. Still he was downstairs and waiting ten minutes before the ImpSec groundcar showed up at the front portico.

When he arrived this time at Illyan's office, the door to the inner chamber was open. The secretary waved him through.

Illyan looked up from his own oversized, overworked comconsole desk, and nodded in return to Miles's slightly-sharper-than-analyst's salute. He reached for a control, and the door to the outer office slid closed, and secure-locked itself. The locking was an unusual gesture, and Miles quelled a rising hope that it meant that this time, something bloody big was in the works, something really challenging.

There was a chair waiting, good. Illyan had been known, when particularly furious, to keep one standing till the yelling part was done. Not that Illyan ever raised his voice; he tended to the devastatingly well-chosen word to convey his emotions, a style Miles admired and hoped to emulate. But there was a peculiar tension in the ImpSec chief today. Grim, much more so than normal. Miles seated himself, and gave Illyan a short nod, signifying his commander had all his attention: I'm ready. Let's go.

Illyan leaned not forward, but back, studying Miles across the wide black surface of the desk. "You told my secretary you had something you wanted to add to your last report?"

Shit. Now or never. But the confession of his little medical problem would be certain to totally derail whatever mission assignment was coming up. Never it is, then. I'll fix it myself, later. As soon as possible. "Nothing important now. What's up?"

Illyan sighed, and drummed his fingers once, introspectively, on the black glass before him. "I received a disturbing report from Jackson's Whole."

Miles's breath drew in. I died there once. "Admiral Naismith is notably unwelcome in those parts, but I'm ready for a rematch. What have the bastards done now?"

"This is not a new mission, nor a new report. This is in relation to your last ... I can hardly call it a mission, since I never ordered it. Your last adventure there." Illyan looked up at him.

"Oh?" said Miles cautiously.

"Complete copies of your cryo-revival surgeon's medical records finally surfaced. It took some time, due to the confusion of the Durona Group s hurried departure from Jackson's Whole, with their records scattered between Escobar and House Fell. House Fell, needless to say, was not forthcoming with extra data. It took even more time for the records to be received and processed by my analysis section, and to finally be read in detail by someone who realized their significance and implications. Some months, in fact."

Miles's belly went abruptly very cold, as if in memory of his freezing death. He had a sudden insight as to the exact state of mind of a person who fell/jumped/was pushed from the top of a very tall building, in that subjectively stretched eternity it took for them to reach the pavement below. We have just made a major mistake. Oh, yes.

"What bothers me most, of course," Illyan went on, "is not your seizures themselves, but the fact that you concealed them from the ImpSec physicians who were trying to return you fit for duty. You lied to them, and through them, to me."

Miles swallowed, searching his paralyzed consciousness for a defense for the indefensible. What couldn't be defended could only be denied. He pictured himself chirping brightly, What seizures, sir? No. "Dr. Durona . . . said they would go away on their own." She had, dammit, she had. "Or . . . they might," he corrected. "At that time, I thought they had."

Illyan grimaced. He picked a cipher-card from his desktop, and held it up between thumb and forefinger. "This," he stated, "is my latest independent report from the Dendarii. Including your fleet surgeons medical reports. The ones she kept in her cabin, not in her sick bay office. They were not easy to obtain. I've been waiting for them. They came in last night."

He had a third observer. I might have known. I should have figured it.

"Do you want to try to play any more little guessing games about this?" Illyan added dryly.

"No, sir," Miles whispered. He hadn't meant it to come out a whisper. "No more games."

"Good." Illyan rocked slightly in his station chair, and tossed the card back to the desktop. His face looked like death itself. Miles wondered what his own face looked like. As wide-eyed as an animal in the headlights, as viewed from a groundcar traveling toward it at a hundred kilometers an hour, he suspected.

"This"—Illyan pointed to the cipher-card—"was a betrayal of the subordinates who depended on you as well as of the superiors who trusted you. And it was a knowing betrayal, proved on Lieutenant Vorberg's body. Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

If the tactical situation was bad, change your ground. If you can't win, change the rules. Miles s internal tension shot him up out of his chair, to pace back and forth before Illyan's desk. His voice rose. "I have served you, body and blood—and I've bled plenty—for nine years, sir. Ask the Marilacans how well I've served you. Ask a hundred others. Over thirty missions, and only two that could remotely be classified as failures. I've laid my life on the line dozens of times, I've literally laid it down. Does that suddenly count for nothing now?"

"It counts"—Illyan inhaled—"for much. That's why I am offering you a medical discharge without prejudice, if you resign now."

"Resign? Quit? This is your idea of a favor? ImpSec has made worse scandals than this disappear—I know you can do more than that, if you choose!"

"It's the best way. Not just for you, but for your name's sake. I have thought this through from every angle. I've been thinking about it for weeks."

This is why he called me home. No mission. There never was. Only this. I was screwed from before the beginning. No chance.

"After serving your father for thirty years," Illyan continued, "I can do no less. And no more."

Miles froze. "My father . . . asked for this? He knows?"

"Not yet. Apprising him is a task I leave to you. This is one last report I do not care to make."

Rare cowardice on Illyan's part, and a fearsome punishment. "My father's influence," said Miles bitterly. "Some favor."

"Believe me, without your record you so justly quote, even your father could not gain you this mercy from me. Your career will end quietly, with no public scandal."

"Yeah," Miles panted. "Real convenient. It shuts me up, and gives me no appeal."

"I advise—with all my heart—against your forcing this to a court-martial. You will never get a more favorable judgment than this private one, between us. It is with no intent to be humorous that I tell you, you haven't a leg to stand on." Illyan tapped the cipher-card, for emphasis. Indeed, there was no amusement at all in his face. "On the documented evidence here alone, never mind the rest of it, you'd be lucky to get out with only a dishonorable discharge, and no further sentence atop it."

"Have you discussed this with Gregor?" Miles demanded. Imperial favor, his last emergency defense, the one he'd sworn he'd die rather than call upon—

"Yes. At great length. I was closeted with him all this morning over nothing but this."

"Oh."

Illyan gestured at his comconsole. "I have your records ready, for you to sign out here and now. Palm-print, retina-scan, and it's done. Your uniforms . . . didn't come from military stores, so need not be returned, and it is traditional to keep one's insignia, but I'm afraid I must ask you to hand in your silver eyes."

Miles, turning on his heel, aborted the half-gesture of his agitated hands reaching to clamp defensively to his collar. "Not my eyes! It's . . . not true, I can explain, I can—" The edges and surfaces of the objects in the room, the comconsole desk, the chairs, Illyan's face, seemed suddenly sharper than before, as if imbued with some heightened measure of reality. A nimbus of green fire broke up into colored confetti, closing over him, No—!

He came to consciousness flat on his back on Illyan's carpet. Illyan's blood-drained face hovered over him, tense and worried. Something was lodged in Miles's mouth—he turned his head and spat out a stylus, a light-pen from Illyan's desk. His collar was unfastened—his hand reached to touch it—but his silver eyes were still in place. He just lay there, for a moment.

"Well," he said thinly at last. "I imagine that was quite a show. How long?"

"About"—Illyan glanced at his chrono—"four minutes."

"About standard."

"Lie still. I'll call a medic."

"I don't need a goddamn medic. I can walk." He tried to get up. One leg buckled, and he went down again, face mashed in the carpet. His face was sticky—he'd evidently hit his mouth, which was swelling, on the first fall, and his nose, which was bleeding. Illyan handed him a handkerchief, and he pressed it to his face. After about a minute, he suffered Illyan to help him back into the chair.

Illyan half-sat on the edge of his desk, watching him. Watching over him, always. "You knew," said Illyan. "And you lied. To me. In writing. In that damned falsified report, you pissed away . . . everything. I'd have mistrusted my memory chip before I mistrusted you. Why, Miles? Were you that panicked?" The anguish leaked into that level voice like blood into a bruise.

Yes. I was that panicked. I didn't want to lose Naismith. I didn't want to lose . . . everything. "It doesn't matter now." He fumbled at his collar. One pin tore the green fabric, coming off in his shaking hands. He thrust the pins blindly at Illyan. "There. You win."

Illyan's hand closed over them. "God save me," he said softly, "from another such victory."

"Fine, good, give me the read-pad. Give me the retinal scan. Let's get this the hell over with. I'm sick of ImpSec, and eating ImpSec shit. No more. Good." The shaking didn't stop, radiating outward in hot waves from the pit of his belly. He was terrified he was about to start crying in front of Illyan.

Illyan sat back, his closed hand turning inward. "Take a couple of minutes to compose yourself. Take as long as you need. Then go into my washroom and wash your face. I'm not unlocking my door till you're fit to go out."

Strange mercies, Illyan. You kill me so courteously. But he nodded, and stumbled to Illyan's little lavatory. Illyan followed him to the door, then, apparently deciding he would stay on his feet this time, left him alone. The face in the mirror was indeed unfit to be seen, bloody and ravaged. It was very like the face he had last seen looking back at him the day Sergeant Beatrice had been killed, except about a hundred years older now. Illyan will not shame a great name. Neither should I. He washed carefully, though he failed to get all the bloodstains out of his torn collar and the cream-colored shirt opened under it.

He returned, to sit docilely, and let Illyan hand him the read-pad for his palm-print, administer the retinal scan, and record his brief, formal words of resignation. "All right. Let me out," he said quietly.

"Miles, you're still shaking."

"I will be, for a while yet. It will pass. Let me out, please."

"I'll call a car. And walk you to it. You shouldn't be alone."

Oh, yes I should. "Very well."

"Do you wish to go directly to a hospital? You ought to. As a properly discharged veteran, you're entitled to ImpMil treatment in your own right, not just in your father's name. I ... figured that would be important."

"No. I wish to go home. I'll deal with it ... later. It's chronic, not critical. Probably be another month before it happens again, if it runs to form."

"You should go to a hospital."

"You"—Miles eyed him—"have just lost your authority over my actions. May I remind you. Simon."

Illyan's hand opened in troubled acquiescence. He walked back around his desk, and pressed the keypad that unlocked his door. He rubbed his hand over his own face, for a moment, as if to wipe away all emotion. And the water standing in his eyes. Miles fancied he could almost feel the coolness of that evaporation, across Illyan's round cheekbones. When Illyan turned back, his face was as bland and closed as Miles had ever seen it.

God, my heart hurts. And his head. And his stomach. And every other part of him. He climbed to his feet, and walked to the door, shrugging away Illyan s hesitant hand under his elbow.

The door hissed open revealing three men, standing in anxious guard near it: Illyan's secretary, General Haroche, and Captain Galeni. Galeni's brows rose, looking at Miles; Miles could tell exactly when he noticed the insignia-stripped collar, for his eyes widened in shock.

Cripes, Duv, what d'you think? That he'd had a fist-fight with Illyan, along with the screaming match? That an enraged Illyan had torn those ImpSec eyes forcibly from Miles's tunic? Circumstantial evidence can be so convincing.

Haroche's lips parted in a breath of disturbed surprise. "What the hell . . . ?" His hand opened in question to Illyan.

"Excuse us." Illyan met no one's eyes, pushing through. The assembled ImpSec officers all wheeled to stare after the pair, as they made it to the corridor and turned left.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Conscious of the ImpSec driver's eyes following him, Miles walked carefully through the front door of Vorkosigan House. He did not let his shoulders sag until the doors closed safely behind him. He fell into the first chair he came to, on top of its cover. It was another hour before he stopped shivering.

Not the growing darkness but bladder pressure at last drove him to his feet. Our bodies are our masters, we their prisoners. Free the prisoners. Once up and moving, his only desire was to be still again. I should get drunk. It's traditional, for situations like this, isn't it? He collected a bottle of brandy from the cellar. Wine seemed inadequately poisonous. This burst of activity dwindled to rest in the smallest room he could find, a fourth-floor chamber which, but for its window, might have passed for a closet. It was a former servants' room, but it had an old wing chair in it. After going to all the trouble to find the brandy, he had not the ambition left to open the bottle. He crouched down small in the big chair.

On his next trip to his bathroom, sometime after midnight, he picked up his grandfather's dagger, and brought it back with him to set it beside the sealed brandy bottle on the lamp table by his left hand. The dagger tempted him as little as the drink, but toying with it did provide a few moments of interest. He let the light slide over the blade, and pressed it against his wrists, his throat, along the thin scars from his cryonic prep already slashed there.  Definitely the throat, if anything. All or nothing, no playing around.

But he'd died once already, and it hadn't helped. Death held neither mystery nor hope. And there lurked the horrible possibility that those who had sacrificed so much to revive him the last time would be inspired to try it again. And botch it. Or rather, botch it even worse. He'd seen half-successful cryo-revivals, vegetable or animal minds whining brokenly in once-human bodies. No. He didn't want to die. At least not where his body could ever be found. He just couldn't bear being alive right now.

The sanctuary in between the two organic states, sleep, refused to come to him. But if he sat here long enough, eventually he must sleep, surely.

Get up. Get up and run, as fast as you can. Back to the Dendarii, before ImpSec or anyone could stop him. Now was his chance, Naismith's chance. Naismith's last chance. Go. Go. Go.

He sat on, muscles knotted, the litany of escape beating in his head.

He discovered that if he drank no water, he didn't need to get up so often. He still didn't sleep, but in the predawn his thoughts began to slow. A thought an hour. That was all right.

Light seeped into the room again through the window, making the lamplight grow pale and wan. A quadrangle of sun crept slowly across the worn patterned rug, as slowly as his thoughts, left to center to right, then gone.

The sounds of the city outside softened with the oncoming twilight. But his little bubble of personal darkness remained as insulated from the world as any cryo-chamber.

Distant voices were calling his name. It's Ivan. Blech. I don't want to talk to Ivan. He did not respond. If he said and did nothing, maybe they wouldn't find him.

Maybe they'd go away again. Dry-eyed, he stared at a crack in the aging plastered wall, which had been in his line of sight for hours.

But his ploy didn't work. Booted footsteps sounded in the corridor outside the little chamber. Then Ivan's voice, shouting much too loud, hurting his ears: "In here, Duv! I found him!"

More footsteps, a quick, heavy stride. Ivan's face wove into his field of vision, blocking the wall. Ivan grimaced. "Miles? You in there, boy?"

Galeni's voice. "My God."

"Don't panic," said Ivan. "He's just gone and got himself sensibly drunk." He picked up the sealed bottle. "Well . . . maybe not." He prodded the unsheathed knife beside it. "Hm."

"Illyan was right," muttered Galeni.

"Not . . . necessarily," said Ivan. "After about the twenty-fifth time you see this, you stop getting excited about it. It's just. . . something he does. If he were going to kill himself, he'd have done it years ago."

"You've seen him like this before?"

"Well . . . maybe not quite like this . . ." Ivan's strained face occluded the plaster again. He waved a hand in front of Miles's eyes.

"He didn't blink," Galeni noted nervously. "Perhaps ... we ought not to touch him. Don't you think we should call for medical help?"

"You mean psychiatric? Absolutely not. Real bad idea. If the psych boys ever got hold of him, they'd never let him go. No. This is a family matter." Ivan straightened decisively. "I know what to do. Come on."

"Is it all right to leave him alone?"

"Sure. If he hasn't moved for a day and a half, he isn't going far." Ivan paused. "Bring the knife along, though. Just in case."

They clattered out again. Miles's slow thoughts worked through it, one thought per quarter hour.

They're gone.

Good.

Maybe they won't come back.

But then, alas, they reappeared.

"I'll take his shoulders," Ivan directed, "you take his feet. No, better pull his boots off first."

Galeni did so. "At least he's not rigid."

No, quite limp. Rigidity would require effort. The boots thumped to the floor. Ivan took off his own uniform tunic, rolled up the sleeves of the round-collared shirt under it, slipped his hands under Miles's armpits, and lifted. Galeni took his feet as instructed.

"He's lighter than I thought," said Galeni.

"Yeah, but you should see Mark, now," said Ivan.

The two men carried him down the narrow servant's stairs between the fourth floor and the third. Maybe they were going to put him to bed. That would save him a bit of trouble. Maybe he would go to sleep there. Maybe, if he were very lucky, he wouldn't wake up again until the next century, when there would be nothing left of his name and his world but a distorted legend in men's minds.

But they continued on past Miles's bedroom door, and bumped him through into an old bathroom down the hall, one that had never been remodeled. It contained an antique iron tub large enough for small boys to swim in, at least a century old.

They plan to drown me. Even better. I shall let them.

"One two three, on three?" said Ivan to Galeni.

"Just three," said Galeni.

"All right."

They swung him over the edge; for the first time, Miles glimpsed what waited for him below. His body tried to spasm, but his unused locked muscles foiled him, and his dry throat blocked his cry of outrage.

About a hundred liters of water. With about fifty kilos of ice cubes floating in it.

He plunged downward into the crashing cold. Ivan's long arms thrust him under all the way.

He came up yelling "Ice wat—" Ivan shoved him back in again.

On his next breath, "Ivan, you goddamn fri—"

On the third emergence his voice found expression in a wordless howl.

"Ah, ha!" Ivan chortled happily. "I thought that would get a rise out of you!" He added aside to Galeni, who had ducked away out of range of the wild splashing, "Ever since that time he spent at Camp Permafrost as a weather officer, there's nothing he hates worse than cold. Back you go, boy."

Miles fought his way out of Ivan's grip, spat freezing water, clambered up, and fell out over the side of the tub. Ice cubes stuck here and there to the outside of his sodden uniform tunic, and slithered down his neck. His hand drew back in a fist, and shot upward at his cousin's grinning face.

It connected with Ivan's chin with a satisfying meaty thunk; the pain was delicious. It was the first time in his life he'd ever successfully slugged Ivan.

"Hey!" Ivan yelped, ducking backwards. Miles's second swing missed, as Ivan now prudently held him at arm's length, out of Miles's range. "I thought that sort of thing broke your arm!"

"Not anymore," Miles panted. He stopped swinging, and stood shivering.

Ivan rubbed his jaw, brows rising. "Feeling better now?" he asked after a moment.

Miles answered with a spate of swearing, plucking off and throwing a few last clinging ice cubes from his tunic at Ivan's head along with the curses.

"Glad to hear it," said Ivan genially. "Now I'm going to tell you what you're going to do, and you're going to do it. First thing is, you're going to go to your room and take off that wet uniform. Then depilate that repellent beard stubble and get a hot shower. And then you're going to get dressed. And then we're going to take you out to dinner."

"Don't want to go out," Miles mumbled, surly.

"Did I ask for an argument? Did you hear me ask for a Betan vote, Duv?"

Galeni, watching in fascination, shook his head.

"Right," Ivan continued. "I don't want to hear it, and you don't have a choice. I've got another fifty kilos of ice tucked in the freezer downstairs, and you know I won't hesitate to use it."

Miles could read the utter, indeed, enthusiastic sincerity of this threat in Ivan's face. His bad words trailed off into a disagreeable, but not disagreeing, hiss. "You enjoyed that," he grumbled at last.

"Damn straight," said Ivan. "Now go get dressed."

Ivan made few further demands upon Miles until he had dragged him out to a nearby restaurant. There he made sotto voce threats until Miles put a few bites of food into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. Once he started eating, he found he was very hungry, and Ivan desisted, satisfied with his performance.

"Now," said Ivan, shoveling in the last bite of his own dessert. "What the hell is going on with you?"

Miles glanced up at the two captains, at Galeni's eye-of-Horus pins. "You first. Did Illyan send you both?"

"He asked me to check on you," said Galeni, "having got the idea that we were friends of a sort. Since the gate guard reported you had gone in, but never come out, and you didn't answer your comconsole after repeated calls and messages, I thought I'd better take a look in person. I felt . . . less than comfortable invading Vorkosigan House by myself, so I rounded up Ivan, whom I construed as having a family right to be there. On the authorization I had from Illyan, the gate guard overrode your locks and let us in, so we didn't have to break a window." Galeni hesitated. "I also didn't fancy having to pull your body down from a rafter somewhere all by myself."

"Told you not," said Ivan. "Not his style. If he ever does do himself in, I'm betting it'll be something that involves large explosions. And lots of innocent bystanders, probably."

Miles and Ivan exchanged sneers.

"I ... wasn't so sure," said Galeni. "You didn't see him, Ivan, when he came out of Illyan's office. The last time I saw anybody who looked that shocky was a fellow I helped pull out of his crashed lightflyer."

"I'll explain it," Miles sighed, "but not here. Some more private place. Too much of it has to do with business." He glanced away from Galeni's silver eyes. "My former business."

"Right," agreed Galeni blandly.

They ended up back in the kitchen at Vorkosigan House. Miles hoped dimly Ivan would help him get drunk, but his cousin brewed tea, instead, and made him drink two cups for rehydration, before settling down astride a chair, his arms crossed on the back, and saying, "All right. Give. You know you have to."

"Yes. I know." Miles closed his eyes briefly, wondering where to begin. The beginning would probably do. Excuses and denials, all so well practiced, boiled up in his head. The taste of them, balanced on his tongue, was more loathsome than clean confession, and more lingering. The shortest way between two points was a straight line. "After my cryo-revival last year ... I had a problem. I started getting these seizures. Convulsions, lasting two to five minutes. They seemed to be triggered by moments of extreme stress. My surgeon stated that, like the memory loss, they might right themselves. They were rare, and seemed to be tailing off as promised. So I ... didn't mention it to my ImpSec doctors, when I came home."

"Oh, shit," murmured Ivan. "I see where this is going. Did you tell anyone?"

"Mark knew."

"You told Mark, but not me?"

"I could trust Mark ... to do what I asked of him. I could only trust you to do what you thought was right." He'd said almost the same thing to Quinn, hadn't he.

God.

Ivan's lips twitched, but he did not deny it.

"You can see why I was afraid it might be a one-way ticket to a medical discharge, at worst. A desk job at best, and no more Dendarii Mercenaries, no more field work. But I thought if I, or rather my Dendarii surgeon, could fix it quietly, Illyan need never be the wiser. She gave me some medication. I thought it was working." No. No excuses, dammit.

"And Illyan caught up with you and canned you for it? Isn't that a little extreme, after all you've done for him?"

"There's more."

"Ah."

"My last mission ... we went to pry a kidnapped ImpSec courier out of the hands of some hijackers out past Zoave Twilight. I wanted to supervise the rescue personally. I was wearing my combat armor. I ... had an episode right in the middle of the operation. My suit's plasma arc locked on. I damn near cut the poor courier in half, but he was lucky. I just lopped off his legs, instead."

Ivan's jaw dropped, then closed. "I ... see."

"No, you don't. Not yet. That was merely criminally stupid. What I did next was fatal. I falsified my mission report. Claimed the accident with Vorberg was an equipment malfunction."

Galeni's breath drew in sharply. "Illyan said . . . you'd resigned by request. But he didn't say whose request or why, and I didn't dare ask. I didn't believe it. I thought it might be the start of some new scam, an internal investigation or something. Except I don't think even you could have faked the look on your face."

Ivan was still processing it. "You lied to Illyan?"

"Yeah. And then I documented my lie. Anything worth doing is worth doing well, yes? I didn't resign, Ivan. I was fired. On all of Barrayar right now, there is no one more fired than I am."

"Did he really rip off your silver eyes?" Ivan's own eyes were round.

"Who said that?"

Galeni grunted. "Looked like it. Haroche thought so."

Worse. He was crying, Ivan. In all his life, Miles had never seen Illyan weep. "No. I did that myself. I did it all to myself." He hesitated. "I had my last seizure in his office. Right in front of him. I think I mentioned they seem to be triggered by stress."

Ivan's face screwed up in a sympathetic wince.

Galeni blew out his breath. "Haroche couldn't believe it either. He said everyone at ImpSec HQ knew Illyan thought you shit gold bars."

Naismith was the best, oh yes. "After the Dagoola IV operation, he damn well should have thought so." But the Dagoola rescue had been almost four years ago. So what have you shit for me lately? "I take it that's a direct quote from Haroche."

"Mm, he can be blunt. He doesn't exactly suffer fools gladly. I'm told he came up through the ranks. He said you were being groomed as Illyan's successor."

Miles's brows rose in startlement. "Impossible. Being a desk driver requires very different qualities than being a field agent. A diametrically opposed attitude to the rules, for starters. I'm not . . . wasn't nearly ready for Illyan's job."

"So Haroche said. Your next posting was to be his assistant, it seems. Five years on the domestic side, and you'd have been ready to step up when Illyan was ready to retire."

"Rubbish. Not Domestic Affairs. Now, if I had to fly a desk, Galactic Affairs on Komarr would actually make sense. I have some experience there."

"That gap in your experience was exactly what they hoped to target by harnessing you with Haroche. Illyan once told me Haroche was personally responsible while he was a Domestic Affairs agent for derailing no less than four serious plots against the Emperors life. Not including the Yarrow incident, which won him his chiefship. Maybe Illyan hoped whatever Haroche has would rub off on you."

"I don't need—" Miles began, and shut his mouth.

"What's the Yarrow incident," asked Ivan, "and if it's that important, why haven't I heard of it?"

"A textbook case in counterterrorism," said Galeni. "Illyan has all his new analysts study it."

"The case is famous inside ImpSec," Miles explained. "Being a success, however, it's practically unknown outside ImpSec. It's the nature of the job. Successes are secret and thankless, failures are splashy and gain you only blame." Take my career, for example. . . .

"It was a close call," said Galeni. "A hyper-isolationist faction aligned with Count Vortrifrani plotted to suicide-drop an old jump-freighter named the Yarrow square on the Imperial Residence. It would have taken out most of the place even without the explosives they'd packed it with. The explosives were their one mistake, since that was the loose thread that led Haroche s team to them. Vortrifrani distanced himself like crazy, but it broke up his support, and the Imperium has been less, ah, embarrassed by him since."

Ivan blinked. "My mother's flat isn't far from the Residence. ..."

"Yes, one wonders how many people in Vorbarr Sultana they'd have taken out if they'd missed their drop point."

"Thousands," Miles muttered.

"I'll have to remember to thank Haroche, next time I see him," said Ivan, sounding impressed.

"I was off-world, at the time," Miles sighed. "As usual." He suppressed an irrational twinge of jealousy. "Nobody ever said anything to me about this proposed promotion. When . . . was this vile little surprise supposed to be sprung?"

"Within the year, apparently."

"I thought I'd made the Dendarii too valuable for ImpSec to even dream of doing anything else with me."

"So, you did a little too good a job."

"Chief of ImpSec at age thirty-five. Huh. God be praised, I'm saved from that at least. Well. No joy to Haroche, to be required to paper train some Vor puppy for the express purpose of being promoted over his head. He ought to be quite relieved."

Galeni said apologetically, "I gather he was, actually."

"Ha," said Miles blackly. He added after a moment, "By the way, Duv. I trust it's obvious that what I've told you is private information. The official version, for ImpSec HQ and everywhere else, was that I was medically discharged without prejudice."

"So Illyan said, when Haroche asked. Illyan was tight-lipped as hell. But you could see there had to be more to it."

Ivan excused himself. Miles brooded into his teacup. He thought he could sleep, now. In fact, there was nothing he wanted more. Ivan returned all too soon, and dumped down a valise beside the kitchen table.

"What's that?" Miles asked suspiciously.

"My things," said Ivan. "For a couple of days."

"You're not moving in!"

"What, don't you have enough space? You've got more rooms than a hotel, Miles."

Miles slumped again, recognizing an argument he wasn't going to win. "There's a thought, for my next career. Vorkosigan's Bed and Breakfast."

"Rooms cheap?" Ivan cocked an eyebrow.

"Hell, no. Charge 'em a fortune." He paused. "So when are you planning to move back out?"

"Not until you get some people in here. Till you get your head fixed, you certainly need a driver, at the very least. I saw your lightflyer downstairs in the garage, by the way. In the shop for adjustments, my ass. And somebody to cook meals and stand over you and see you eat them. And somebody to clean up after you."

"I don't make that much mess—"

"And clean up after all the other somebodies," Ivan went on relentlessly. "This place needs a staff, Miles."

"Just like any other museum, eh? I don't know."

"If you're saying you don't know if you want them, guess what. You don't have a choice. If you're saying you don't know how to hire them . . . want my mother to do it for you?"

"Er ... I think I'd rather select my own personnel. She'd make it all too right and proper, to use Sergeant Bothari's old phrase."

"There it is. Do it, or I'll have her do it for you. How's that for a threat?"

"Effective."

"Right, then."

"Don't you think I could get by with just one person? To do everything, drive, cook ..."

Ivan snorted. "—chase after you and make you take your nasty medicine? For that, you'd need to hire a Baba to find you a wife. Why don't you just start with a driver and cook, and go on from there."

Miles grimaced tiredly.

"Look," said Ivan. "You're a bleeding Vor lord in Vorbarr Sultana. We own this town. So live like one! Have some fun for a change!"