"Have you lost your mind, Ivan?"

"You're not a guest in Vorkosigan House, Miles. You're its only child, or you were till Mark came along, and he has his own private fortune. At least widen your possibilities! You grew so narrow, working for Illyan. It's like you hardly had a life at all, lately."

That's quite right. Naismith had all the life. But Naismith was dead now—killed by that needle grenade on Jackson's Whole after all, though the double-take of realization had required a full year to run its course.

Miles had read of mutants, twins born joined together inseparably in their bodies. Sometimes, horrifically, one died first, leaving the other attached to a corpse for hours or days until they died too. Lord Vorkosigan and Admiral Naismith, body-bound twins. I don't want to think about this anymore. I don't want to think at all.

"Lets ... go to bed, Ivan. Its late, isn't it?"

"Late enough," said Ivan.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Miles slept till midmorning the next day. To his dismay, when he threaded the labyrinth of the house down to the kitchen, he found Ivan sitting drinking coffee, his breakfast dishes piled in the sink.

"Don't you have to go to work?" Miles inquired, pouring the chewy dregs from the coffeemaker into his cup.

"I have a few days personal leave," Ivan informed him.

"How many?"

"As many as I need."

As many as he needed, that is, to satisfy himself that Miles was going to behave properly. Miles thought it through. So ... if he hired that unwanted staff, Ivan, relieved of the deathwatch, would slope off home to his neat little flat—which, incidentally, had no staff underfoot, only a discreet cleaning service. Then Miles could fire the staff . . . that is, discharge them again, with suitably glowing recommendations and a bonus. Yeah. That would work.

"Have you communicated to your parents about this yet?" Ivan asked.

"No. Not yet."

"You ought to. Before they get some garbled version through some other source."

"So I ought. It's . . . not easy." He glanced up at Ivan. "I don't suppose you could . . . ?"

"Absolutely not!" cried Ivan in a tone of horror. After a moment of silence, he relented to the measure of a, "Well ... if you really can't. But I'd rather not."

"I'll . . . think about it."

Miles slopped the last of the greenish coffee into his cup, trudged back upstairs, and dressed in a loose, embroidered backcountry-style shirt and dark trousers, which he found in the back of his closet. He'd last worn them three years ago. At least they weren't tight. While Ivan wasn't around, he pulled all his Barrayaran uniforms and boots out of his closet and bundled them into storage in an unused guest room down the hall, so he wouldn't have to look at them every time he opened his closet door. After a long hesitation, he exiled his Dendarii mercenary uniforms likewise. The few clothes left hanging seemed lonely and forlorn.

He settled himself at his comconsole in his bedroom. A message to his parents, ah God. And he ought to send one to Elli Quinn, too. Would he ever get the chance to make it right again with her? Face-to-face, body to body? It was a horribly complex thing to attempt via a comconsole message: just his thin electronic ghost, mouthing words ill-chosen or misunderstood, weeks out of synchrony. And all his messages to the Dendarii were monitored by ImpSec censors.

I can't face this now. I'll do it later. Soon. I promise.

He turned his thoughts instead to the less daunting problem of Vorkosigan House staffing. So what was the budget for this project? His lieutenant's medical-discharge half-pay would barely cover the salary and board of one full-time servant, even with a free room thrown in, at least of the sorts of superior folk normally employed by the aristocracy in the capital—he would be competing with sixty other District Counts' households in that labor market here, a host of lesser lordlings, and the sort of new industrial wealthy non-Vor who were presently carrying off such a distressing percentage of eligible Vor maidens to preside over their homes in the style to which they aspired.

Miles tapped in a comconsole code. The pleasant, smiling face of the Vorkosigans' business manager, Tsipis, appeared with startling promptness over the vid plate upon Miles's call reaching his office in Hassadar. "Good morning, Lord Vorkosigan! I was not aware you had returned from your off-planet duty. How may I serve you?"

He was not yet aware of Miles's medical discharge, either, apparently. Miles felt too weary to explain even the edited-for-public-consumption version of events, so only said, "Yes. I got in a few weeks ago. It ... looks like I'm going to be downside longer than I'd anticipated. What funds can I draw upon? Did Father leave you any instructions?"

"All of it," said Tsipis.

"Excuse me? I don't understand."

"All of the accounts and funds were made joint with you, just before the Count and Countess departed for Sergyar. Just in case. You are your fathers executor, you know."

"Yes, but . . ." He hadn't thought Sergyar was that wild a frontier. "Um . . . what can I do?"

"It's much easier to say what you can't do. You can't sell the entailed properties, namely the residence at Hassadar and Vorkosigan House. You can buy whatever you wish, of course, or sell anything your grandfather left you solely in your own name."

"So . . . can I afford to hire a full-time driver?"

"Oh, my, yes, you could afford to staff Vorkosigan house in full. The funds are there, piling up."

"Aren't they needed for the Viceroy's Palace on Sergyar?"

"Countess Vorkosigan has tapped a certain amount of her private moneys, apparently for some redecorating project, but your father is only maintaining his twenty Armsmen at present. Everything else on Sergyar comes out of the Imperial budget."

"Oh."

Tsipis brightened. "Are you thinking of reopening Vorkosigan House, my lord? That would be splendid. It was such a fine sight, last year at Winterfair, when I dined there."

"Not ... at present."

Tsipis drooped. "Ah," he murmured, in a tone of disappointment. Then a look of belated enlightenment came over his face. "My lord ... do you need money?"

"Er . . . yes. That was what I had in mind. To, like, pay a driver, maybe a cook, pay bills, buy things ... a suitable living allowance, you know." His ImpSec pay, accumulating in his lengthy absences on duty, had always been more than enough. He wondered how much to ask Tsipis for.

"But of course. How would you like it? A weekly deposit into your Service account, perhaps?"

"No ... I'd like a new account. Separate. Just . . . to me as Lord Vorkosigan."

"Excellent thinking. Your father is always very careful to keep his personal and Imperial funds identifiably separated. It's a good habit to start. Not that the most foolhardy Imperial Auditor would ever have dared to take him on, of course. Nor have looked anything but a fool afterwards, when the numbers were laid out." Tsipis tapped on his comconsole, and glanced aside at some data readout. "Suppose I transfer the entire accumulated unused Household fund over into your new account, for seed money. And then just send the usual weekly allotment to follow."

"Fine."

"Now, if you need any more, do call me right away."

"Sure."

"I'll send you your new account chit by courier within the hour."

"Thank you." Miles reached to cut the com, then added as an afterthought, "How much is it?"

"Five thousand marks."

"Oh, good."

"And eighty thousand marks to start," Tsipis added.

Miles did a quick mental reversal, and calculation, "This place was sucking down five thousand marks a week?"

"Oh, much more than that, with the Armsmen, and the Countess's personal account. And this does not include major repairs, which are budgeted separately."

"I ... see."

"Now, should you take an interest, I should be happy to go over all your financial affairs with you in much more detail," Tsipis added eagerly. "There's so much that could be done with a somewhat more aggressive, entrepreneurial, and, dare I say, less conservative and more inventive approach."

"If ... I ever have the time. Thank you, Tsipis." Miles quit the com much less casually.

Good God. He could buy . . . damn near anything he wanted. He tried to think of something he wanted.

The Dendarii.

Yeah. We know. But their price, for him, wasn't measured in money. What else?

Once, in his increasingly distant youth, he'd lusted briefly after a lightflyer, faster and redder than Ivan's.

A particularly fine model, albeit several years old now, sat in the garage downstairs, only lightly used. Of course, he couldn't fly it at all now.

It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart's hope. It was what I wanted to be.

What had that been? Well, an admiral, of course, a Barrayaran one, by age 35, one year younger than when his father had become the youngest in post-Isolation history at age 36. Despite Miles's height, and in the teeth of his handicaps. But even had he been abnormal of body, his era had brought him no convenient major wars to speed promotion. ImpSec covert ops had been the best he could do, not just the one branch of the Service that would take him, but the only one that could put him in the forefront of the only significant action presently available. How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old? Too damaged.

He turned to his list of five retired Vorkosigan Armsmen living in the Vorbarr Sultana area. Though elderly, an Armsman, with his wife perhaps to cook, would be the ideal solution to his problem. He wouldn't have to teach them anything about Vorkosigan House's routine, and they'd have no objection to a short-term gig. He began coding his calls. Maybe I'll get lucky on the first try.

One was too doddering to drive anymore himself. The other four's wives all said no, or rather, No!

It wasn't as if he were in the heat of battle; he could not justify invoking certain archaic loyalty oaths. With a snort, he gave it up, and went to collect last night's scraps from the kitchen in his ongoing campaign to convince Zap the Cat to not snatch food with razor claws, run under a chair, and growl through her gorge, but rather, eat daintily, and sit on one's lap and purr gratefully afterwards, like a proper Vor cat. In all, there was a lot about Zap that reminded Miles of his clone-brother Mark, and he'd done all right with Mark in the end. It wouldn't hurt to let the gate guard know about Tsipis's courier, too.

Miles arrived to find the gate guard had a visitor, a tall, blond young man who bore a notable, if softer, resemblance to the sharper-featured Corporal Kosti. He also bore a large lacquered box.

"Good morning, or should I say, afternoon, sir," the guard greeted him with a vague aborted salute almost worthy of an HQ analyst, belatedly recognizing the fact that Miles wore no uniform. "Um . . . may I introduce my younger brother Martin?"

You're not old enough to have a younger brother. Hello." Miles stuck out his hand. The blond youth shook it without hesitation, though is eyes did widen a bit, looking down at Miles. "Uh . . hello. Lieutenant. Lord Vorkosigan." Nobody'd briefed Kosti either, it appeared. The corporal was too far down in the hierarchy, maybe. Miles glanced away from the ImpSec silver eyes on Kosti-the-elder's stiff collar. Well, get it over with. "No more the lieutenant, I'm afraid. I've just mustered out of the Service altogether. Medical discharge."

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that, si—my lord." The gate guard sounded quite sincere. But he did not demand embarrassing explanations. Nobody, looking at Miles, would question the medical discharge story. Zap oozed from under the kiosks chair, and growled lightly at Miles, whom she was growing to recognize.

"That hairy beast isn't getting any friendlier, is she?" said Miles. "Just fatter."

"I'm not surprised," said Corporal Kosti. "Every time we change shifts she tries to convince whoever is coming on duty she's been starved by the last man."

Miles offered a scrap, which Zap deigned to accept in the usual manner, and then retreated to scarf her spoils. Miles sucked on the scratch on the back of his thumb. "Clearly, she's training to be a guard cat. If only we could teach her to tell friend from foe." He stood up again.

"Nobody wants to hire me for just two months," Martin said to his brother, evidently continuing a conversation Miles s arrival had interrupted. Miles's brow rose. "Looking for work, are you, Martin?' "Looking to turn eighteen, and apply to the Service," said Martin stoutly. "I've two more months to wait. But my mother said if I don't find something for me to do in the meanwhile she will. And I'm afraid it has something do with cleaning."

Wait till you meet your first master sergeant, kid. You'll find out about cleaning. "I cleaned drains on Kyril Island, once," Miles reminisced. "I was quite good at it."

"You, my lord?" Martin's eyes grew round.

Miles's lips crimped. "It was exciting. I found a body."

"Oh." Martin settled. "ImpSec business, right?"

"Not ... at the time."

"His first sergeant will straighten him out," the corporal confided confidently to Miles.

He treats me as an honorable veteran. He does not know. "Oh, yes." The two insiders grinned malevolently at the would-be apprentice. "The Service is getting pickier with its recruits, these days. ... I hope you didn't slack your schoolwork."

"No, my lord," said Martin.

If true, this one would be a shoo-in. He had the physique for a ceremonial guard; his brother, obviously, had the brains to be a real one. "Well, good luck to you." Better luck than mine. No, unjust to use his daily gift of breath to complain about his luck. "So, Martin . . . can you drive?"

"Of course, my lord."

"Lightflyer?"

A slight hesitation. "I've done a bit."

"I happen to be in temporary need of a driver."

"Really, my lord? Do you think—could I—?"

"Perhaps."

The corporal's forehead crinkled in mild dismay. "It's part of my job to keep him alive, Martin. You wouldn't embarrass me, would you?"

Martin gave him a brotherly curl of the lip, but disdained, interestingly, to rise to the bait. His attention was on Miles. "When could I start?"

"Any time, I suppose. Today, if you like." Yes, he needed to at least go to the grocery and get another crate of Reddi-Meals! "There probably wouldn't be much to do at first, but I wouldn't know in advance when I wanted you, so I'd like you to live in. You could spend your spare time studying up for your Service entrance evaluations." Plus, of course, the medical watch. Would the acquisition of the possibly-more-pliable Martin be enough to displace Ivan? He would have to apprise Martin of that extra little detail of his job later.

No. Sooner. The next attack could happen any time. Unfair, to hit the kid with a convulsing employer and no warning. Elli Quinn would agree. "I can't drive myself. I've been having trouble with seizures. An after-affect of an acute case of death I picked up last year, courtesy of ... a well-aimed needle grenade. The cryo-revival almost worked."

The corporal looked enlightened. "I never thought a courier's job was the feather bed some people make it out to be."

Martin stared down at him in utter fascination, almost as impressed as he'd been by the drain-cleaning confession. "You were dead, my lord?"

"So they tell me."

"What was it like?"

"I don't know," said Miles shortly. "I missed it." He relented slightly. "Being alive again hurt, though."

"Wow." Martin shoved the lacquer box toward his brother. Zap the Cat emerged again to roll backwards across the mirror-polished toes of the corporal's boots, purring wildly, waving her claws in the air, and glaring at the box.

"Calm down, Zap, you'll set off the alarms," said the corporal, amused. He set the box down on the kiosk's tiny table and released the lid. Somewhat absently, he tore off the cover of his Service-issue ready-meal lunch, and set it on the floor; Zap sniffed it, and returned to clawing his booted leg and looking longingly at the lacquered box.

The inside of the box lid turned into a clever tray or plate, with little compartments. Onto it Kosti placed two temperature-controlled jugs, a bowl, and cups; there followed an assortment of sandwiches on two different kinds of bread with variously colored fillings, cut into circle, star, and square shapes, the crusts removed; carved fruit on a stick; buttery cookies; and round tarts with flaky, fluted, sugar-sprinkled crusts, oozing dark, thick fruit syrups. From one of the jugs Kosti poured a pinkish cream soup into the bowl; from the other, some spicy hot drink. Both steamed in the cool air. For Zap the Cat there was a wad of prettily tied green leaves that unfolded to reveal a meat paste of some kind, apparently the same as filled one of the sandwiches. Zap dived in the moment Kosti spread it on the floor, growling ecstatically, tail lashing.

Miles stared in amazement, and swallowed saliva. "What is all that, Corporal?"

"My lunch," said Kosti simply. "M' mother sends it over every day." He batted away a brotherly paw descending on one sandwich. "Hey. You can get yours at home. This is mine." He glanced up a little uncertainly at Miles.

Technically, ImpSec personnel on duty were not supposed to eat anything but ImpSec-issued rations, to avoid any attacks through ingestible drugs or poisons. But if you couldn't trust your mother and brother, who could you trust? Besides ... it wasn't Miles's officerly job to enforce ImpSec regs in idiotic situations anymore. "Your mother makes all that? Every day?"

"Mostly," said Kosti. "With my sisters married—"

Of course.

"—and just Martin left in the house, I think she's getting a little bored."

"Corporal Kosti. Martin." Miles took a deep breath, laden with delectable aromas. "Do you think your mother would like a. job?"

"Things are looking up," said Ivan judiciously over their lunch the next day. Ma Kosti had deposited her artistic offering and withdrawn from the Yellow Parlor, possibly to bring the next load. Several minutes later he added, muffled around a full mouth, "What are you paying her?"

Miles told him.

"Double it," said Ivan decisively. "Or you'll lose her after your first dinner party. Someone will hire her away. Or kidnap her."

"Not with her son as my gate guard. Besides, I'm not planning any dinner parties."

"That would be a shame. Want me to?"

"No." Miles weakened, possibly a subtle and sinister effect of the spiced peach tart melting in his mouth. "Not at present, anyway." He smiled slowly. "But in the department of great leaders of history . . . you can tell everyone with perfect truth that Lord Vorkosigan eats the same food as his gate guard and driver."

A contract with Ivan's cleaning service to send in people twice a week completed the staffing of Vorkosigan House to Ivan's convenience. But as a ploy to get rid of Ivan, Miles realized, the acquisition of Ma Kosti had proved a slight miscalculation. He should have hired a bad cook.

If Ivan would only leave, Miles could go back to brooding in peace. He couldn't lock his bedroom door and not answer it without it being an invitation to Ivan to break it down; and there was a limit to how much he could snarl and sulk without risking another ice-water dip.

At least Ivan could start going back to work in the daytime, Miles thought. He tried a broad hint over dinner.

" 'Most men,'" he quoted, " 'are of naught more use in their lives but as machines for turning food into shit.'"

Ivan cocked an eyebrow at him. "Who said that? Your grandfather?"

"Leonardo da Vinci," Miles returned primly. But was compelled to add, "Grandfather quoted it to me, though."

"Thought so," said Ivan, satisfied. "Sounds just like the old General. He was a monster in his day, wasn't he?" Ivan put another bite of roast dripping with wine sauce into his mouth, and started chewing.

Ivan . . . was a pain. The last thing a monster wanted was a fellow to follow him around all day long with a mirror.

The days had blended formlessly into a week before Miles found a message from the outside world on his comconsole. He hit the replay, and the fine-boned face of Lady Alys Vorpatril composed itself over his vid plate.

"Hello, Miles," she began. "I was very sorry to hear about your medical discharge. I know it must be a great disappointment to you, after all your efforts."

Credit to Ivan, he had certainly not told her the whole story, or her condolences would have been much differently phrased. She dismissed his utter destruction with an airy wave, and went on to her own concerns. "At Gregor s request I am hostessing an intimate luncheon in the Residences south garden tomorrow afternoon. He has asked me to invite you. He asks you to come an hour early for a personal conference. I'd take that as Requests and Requires your Attendance, rather than just invites, if I were you, on that first matter. Or so I read it between the lines, though he was all soft-voiced about it, the way he gets sometimes, you know. RSVP immediately you get this message, please." She cut the com.

Miles bent, and rested his forehead on the cool edge of the comconsole. He'd known this moment must come; it was inherent in choosing to live. Gregor was giving him the opportunity to formally apologize. They had to clear the air sooner or later. If only as Count of his District someday, Miles was going to be around Vorbarr Sultana for a long time yet. He wished he might render his apology in the old archaic belly-sticking sense. In absentia. It would be easier and less painful.

Why didn't they just leave me dead the first time?

He sighed, sat up, and punched in Lady Alys's number on the com.

CHAPTER NINE

Count Vorkosigan's armored groundcar sighed to the pavement under the east portico of the Imperial Residence. Martin looked nervously back over his shoulder toward the gates, and the gesturing guards clustered around them. "Are you sure that's going to be all right, my lord?"

"Don't worry about it," said Miles, seated beside him in the drivers compartment. "They'll have that little bit of wrought-iron straightened back up and repainted before I'm ready to be picked up again, I wager."

Martin made to pop the canopy, or at least, hunted valiantly for the control to do so in the gleaming array before him. Miles pointed. "Thanks," Martin muttered.

The canopy rose; Miles escaped with his life. "Martin . . . tell you what. While I'm engaged in here, why don't you take this barge for a practice spin around the city." He dropped the groundcar's comm link into his pocket. "Ill call you back when I need you. If you"—Miles deleted run into a—"have a problem, call me . . . no." He suspected he would shortly be praying for interruptions to his upcoming interview with Gregor, but it was cheating to prearrange them. "Call this number." He leaned over and tapped a code into the car's elaborate console. "This will get you a very competent gentleman named Tsipis, nice fellow, he'll tell you what to do."

"Yes, my lord."

"Watch your forward momentum. The power in this beast fools you. The heavy-duty fuel cells add mass almost as badly as the armoring does. The handling is quite deceptive. Take it out someplace where you have a. lot of space, and experiment, so it won't surprise you again."

"Uh . . . thank you, sir." The canopy hissed shut; through the polarized half-mirroring Miles could see Martin suck on his lip in concentration, as the car rose and moved forward once more. The car's silvery-Reaming left rear edge was undamaged, Miles noted without surprise. Another trainee, ah yes. If he'd had his wits about him, he could have sent the boy out to practice all last week, and avoided that minor embarrassment with Gregor's gate. But Martin would do all right, once he'd been permitted enough experience, and the better for not having the unnerving presence of his lordly little new employer at his elbow. One of the Residences liveried servants met Miles at the door, and escorted him to the north wing; they were headed for Gregor's private office, then. The north wing was the only section of the sprawling Imperial Residence less than two hundred years old. It had been burned to the ground during the War of Vordarian's Pretendership, the year of Miles's soltoxin-gas-damaged birth, and subsequently rebuilt. The Emperors ground-floor office was one of Gregor's few truly private and personal spaces. The decoration was spare, the limited artwork all purchased from rising young artists who were actually still alive, and there wasn't an antique in it.

Gregor was standing by a tall, heavily draped window, staring out at his garden, as Miles entered. Had he been watching? He wore his Vorbarra House uniform today, very sharp; Miles, presently feeling allergic to uniforms, was under-dressed for the Residence in some slightly outdated street wear he'd rummaged from the back of his closet.

The servant announced, "Lord Vorkosigan," and followed himself out. Gregor nodded, and waved Miles to a chair. Miles returned a somewhat leaden smile as Gregor seated himself across from him, and leaned forward, hands clasped on his knees.

"This is as difficult for me as I'm sure it must be for you," Gregor began.

Miles's smile grew dryer. "Not . . . quite, I fancy," he murmured.

Gregor grimaced; one hand flipped outward, as if to bat away the bait. "I wish you hadn't done it."

"I wish I hadn't done it too."

Gregor continued inconsistently, "We cannot undo what's done. No matter how we might wish it."

"Mm. If I could—one of those one-wish things—I don't even know that I'd choose this. Maybe go back instead to the death of Sergeant Bothari, and undo that, right at the beginning. I don't know . . . maybe it wouldn't have worked out any better. Probably not. But that was a more innocent mistake, if more lethal. I've graduated to more calculated stupidities, these days." His voice was stiff.

"You were on the verge of such great things."

"What, a desk job in Domestic Affairs? I beg to differ." That was, perhaps, the sharpest bite in all this tangle: that he'd sacrificed everything up to and including his integrity to save an identity that was scheduled to be taken away from him within a year anyway. If he had known, he would have . . . what? What, huh?

Gregor's lips thinned in serious displeasure. "I've spent a lifetime having my affairs managed by old men. You were the first man of my generation I thought I might successfully place in a position of real power and responsibility in the upper echelons of what is ironically called my government."

And I screwed up, yes, we know, Gregor. "You have to give them this much credit, they weren't old when they started serving you. Illyan's brevet field promotion to Chief of ImpSec was at what, age thirty? And he was going to make me wait to thirty-five, the hypocrite."

Gregor was shaking his head. If he says, "Miles, Miles, whatever are we going to do with you?", I'm walking out of here. But what he said instead was, "So what are you planning to do now?"

Almost as bad. But Miles stayed seated. "I don't know. I need . . . some time off, serious time off. Time to think. Medical leave and travel time aren't really the same thing."

"I ... request, that you not attempt to make independent contact with the Dendarii Mercenaries. I realize that I and ImpSec combined probably couldn't stop you, if you were determined to hijack them and take off. But there's no way I'd be able to save you from a treason charge this time."

Miles, managing not to swallow guiltily, nodded perfect understanding. He'd always known that would be a one-way trip. "The Dendarii don't need a commander with convulsions either. Till I get my head fixed—if it can be fixed—it's a null temptation." Perhaps fortunately. He hesitated, then let his primary anxiety surface in the most neutral wording he could muster. "What will the status of the Dendarii Fleet be now?"

"That would seem to depend on its new commander. How will Quinn want to play it?"

So, Gregor was not planning to unilaterally dispose of all of Miles's creative efforts. Miles sighed inward relief, and chose his next words carefully. "She'd be a fool to throw away our—her—Imperial retainer. And she's nobody's fool. I see no reason the fleet cannot continue to be the same resource for ImpSec under her that they were under me."

"I'm willing to wait and see how it works out. See if she can deliver the successes. Or not."

God help you, Quinn. But the Dendarii could remain the Emperor's Own, even without him, yes, that was the important part. They were not to be abandoned. "Quinn's been my apprentice for damn near a decade. She's in her mid-thirties, at the peak of her performance. She's creative, she's determined, and she gets amazingly streamlined in emergencies, of which she's encountered a fair number, in my wake. If she's not ready to move up ... then I'm not the commander I thought I was."

Gregor nodded shortly. "Very good." He inhaled, almost visibly changing tack; his face grew lighter. "Will you join me for lunch now, m'lord Vorkosigan?"

"I appreciate the gesture, Gregor. But must I stay?"

"There's someone I want you to meet. Or rather, observe."

He still values my opinion? "My judgment lately has been nothing to write home about."

"Mm . . . speaking of that . . . have you told your parents about this yet?"

"No," said Miles, and added cautiously, "Have you?"

"No . . ."

A glum silence fell for a moment.

"It's your job," said Gregor at last, firmly.

"I don't deny it."

"Do see to your medical treatment promptly, Miles. I am willing to make that an Imperial order, if necessary."

"Not . . . necessary, Sire."

"Good." Gregor rose; Miles perforce rose too.

They were halfway to the door when Miles managed a small-voiced "Gregor?"

"Yes . . .?"

I'm sorry.

Gregor hesitated, then returned a very tiny nod. They continued on together.

In a grassy nook in the South Garden, enclosed by trees and flowering shrubs, a table for four had been set under a fringed muslin awning. The weather was cooperating, the autumn sun dappling a shade that was perfectly cooled by a faint breath of breeze. The noises of the surrounding city seemed muffled and distant, as if the garden were embedded in a dream. Miles, slightly disturbed, eyed the arrangement as he seated himself at Gregor's left hand. Surely he does not mean to honor me with this. That would be a mockery, right now. Gregor waved away an anxious liveried servant offering a pre-lunch selection of drinks; they were waiting for someone, it appeared.

Enlightenment arrived simultaneously with Lady Alys Vorpatril, very correctly dressed for a Vor woman in the afternoon in a blue bolero and skirt trimmed with silver that seemed—deliberately?—to bring out the faint streaks of silver in her dark hair. She escorted Dr. Laisa Toscane, neat and stylish in Komarran trousers and jacket. Servants leapt to seat the women, then faded discreetly out of sight again.

"Good afternoon, Dr. Toscane," Miles said, as greetings were exchanged all around. "We meet again. Is this your second trip to the Residence, then?"

"My fourth." She smiled. "Gregor very kindly invited me to a luncheon meeting last week with Minister Racozy and some of his staff, where I had a chance to present some of my Trade Group's views. And then there was a ceremonial reception for some retiring District officers, that was just fascinating."

Gregor? Miles glanced at Alys Vorpatril, seated on his own left; she returned a very bland look.

The servants began presenting food and the conversation commenced, not surprisingly, with a few platitudes about Komarran affairs. It took an almost immediate hard left turn, however, as Gregor and Laisa began comparing families and childhoods; they were both only-children, a fact they seemed to find mutually engrossing and worthy of much comparison-analysis. Miles had the strong sense of having come in on Part 2, or perhaps Part 4, of an ongoing serial. Miles's own role seemed limited to occasional confirming murmurs about incidents of the distant past he barely remembered. Alys, normally chatty, said almost as little.

Gregor exerted himself to draw Laisa out; but she held her own, gently insisting on a point-for-point trade of information. It was more than Miles had heard Gregor talk at one time in ages.

When the cream cakes appeared, along with an offering of five kinds of dessert coffees and teas, Gregor said shyly, "I've arranged a small surprise for you, Laisa." He made a covert hand-motion, down at his side, an obviously prearranged signal immediately picked up by an attentive liveried man, who promptly disappeared around the shrubbery. "You said you'd never seen a horse except in vids. The horse is such a symbol of the Vor, I thought you might like a ride."

On cue, the liveried man returned leading the most gorgeous little white mare Miles had ever seen in his life, not barring his grandfathers stables of expensive bloodstock. Big-eyed, dainty-footed . . . the hooves were all polished black, and the long silvery mane and flowing tail had scarlet ribbons braided in, to match the saddlecloth, not to mention the scarlet embroidered lead-line attached to the gilt bridle.

"Oh, my." Laisa's breath was quite taken away, as she ogled the beast. "May I pet it? But I have no idea how to ride!"

"But of course." Gregor escorted her to the mare's side; she laughed as her hands flew to touch the glossy neck, and ran through the shining mane. The mare's placid eyes half-closed in calm acceptance of these just attentions. "I'll lead you myself," said Gregor. "Just at a walk. She's very gentle." The mare was next door to somnolent, in fact, in Miles's judgment; Gregor was obviously taking no chances on any unpleasant horsy accidents spoiling his show.

Laisa made doubtful, fascinated, please-talk-me-into-it noises. Miles leaned over to Lady Alys and whispered, "Where did Gregor ever find that horse?"

"Three Districts away," she murmured back. "It was flown in to the Residence s stables yesterday. Gregor has been driving his domestic staff to distraction for four days, planning every detail of this luncheon."

"I'll give you a leg up," Gregor went on, as the groom held the embroidered lead-line. "Here, let me show you how. You bend your leg and I cup it in my hand. . . ."

It took three tries and a good deal of laughter to boost Laisa aboard. If Gregor was trying to cop a feel, he'd managed to do so with stunning savoir faire. She settled into the velvet-padded saddle looking delighted, self-conscious, and a little proud of herself. Gregor recovered the line from the groom, motioned him away, and led off for a tour of the garden paths, talking and gesturing.

Miles, wide-eyed, swallowed a large gulp of scalding tea. "So, Aunt Alys . . . are you playing Baba, or what?"

"It's beginning to look like it," she said dryly, her own eyes following the delicate little cavalcade.

"When did this happen?"

"I'm not quite sure. I looked around, and . . . there it was. I've been scrambling to catch up ever since."

"But Alys ... a Komarran, for Empress?" It had to be an Empress that Gregor had in mind; Alys would never have leant herself as a procurer. "Aren't the conservative-wing Vor lords going to shit themselves? Not to mention the remaining radical revolutionary Komarrans. They'll shit themselves sideways."

"Please do not use barracks-language at the table, Miles. But in answer to your question . . . perhaps. The Centrist Coalition will like it, though. Or could be persuaded to."

"By you? Or by their wives, through you, do you mean? Do you approve?"

Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. 'Taking it all in all... yes, I think I do. Since your mother would not bestir herself in that department, I have by default been supervising Gregor's bride-search for the last decade. And a frustrating task it has been. I mean, he'd just sit there, and stare at me, with this dreadful, doleful, Why are you doing this to me? look on his face. I think I've paraded every tall, slim, Vor beauty on the planet past him at one time or another, to the great disruption of their lives and the routines of their families; I've offered dozens of resumes . . . nothing worked. I swear, Gregor has been even more frustrating than Ivan, and Ivan has lost so many good opportunities. ... A certain nameless wit, or half-wit, even whispered I ought to start trying boys, but I pointed out that would not solve the heir problem, which is the whole point of the exercise in the first place."

"Not without a great deal of unprecedented genetic engineering interference," Miles agreed. "No, not boys, not Gregor. But not a Vor either. I had that figured out years ago—I wish you'd have asked me. Gregor's even more closely related to Mad Emperor Yuri than I am. And, um ... he knows more about his father, the late unlamented Crown Prince Serg, than I think my parents might wish. He has these historically well-founded genetic paranoias about—well—paranoia. And about Vor inbreeding. He'd never let himself fall in love with another Vor."

Alys's fine dark brows twitched. "I eventually figured out the Vor part for myself. It left me with a dilemma, as you may imagine."

"So . . . what does he see in Dr. Toscane, d'you think? Besides brains, beauty, a nice personality, a good sense of humor, social grace, wealth, and non-Vor genetics, that is?"

Alys vented a small, ladylike snort. "I think it's even simpler and more fundamental than that, though I doubt Gregor is conscious of it. Not to imitate one of your mother's annoying Betan-style instant psychoanalyses, but . . . Gregor's mother was murdered when he was five years old." Her red lips crimped briefly in old pain; Lady Alys had known Princess Kareen, back then. "Look at Dr. Toscane's figure. It's . . . maternal. Not a bone in sight anywhere. All that time I wasted herding tall, slender beauties past him, when I should have been rounding up short, plump beauties. I could cry." She ate a decisive bite of cream cake, instead.

Miles cleared his throat, neutrally. Gregor and Laisa rounded a corner, turned away, and passed up an alley of topiaried yew trees. Tall, thin Gregor strode at Laisa's stirrup, gesturing animatedly, smiling and talking. Laisa leaned half-toward him, over the saddle-bow, eyes shining, lips parted, listening with ... all her heart, Miles feared.

"So, Miles," Alys went on, her voice cooler, "tell me about your Captain Galeni. It's not clear to me where he fits in all this."

"He's not my Captain," Miles said. "He's Gregor's Captain."

"But he's your friend, according to Ivan."

"Ivan worked with him much longer than I did."

"Quit evading the question. I have a feeling it's important, or could be. It's as much my job to prevent domestic disasters for Gregor as it is Simon's to prevent security ones or as it was your father's—it's Minister Racozy's job now, I suppose—to prevent political ones. Simon's ImpSec report claims Galeni and Dr. Toscane are not lovers."

"I ... no. I don't think so either. He was courting her, though. That's why I invited them along to the Imperial State dinner in the first place. To help him out." Miles's Imperial luncheon was turning heavy, in his belly.

"But they are not formally engaged?"

"I don't think so."

"Had they talked about matrimony?"

"7 don't know. I'm not exactly intimate with Galeni, y'know. We've just . . . worked together, thrown together once by accident in that mess with Mark on Earth, later by assignment during an ImpSec investigation of a certain nasty incident on Komarr. I think Galeni had marriage on his mind, yes. But he's a very closed man, for a lot of good reasons. I think it's been hard for him to try to get close to Laisa. Not because of what she is, but because of how he is, or how he's made himself. Slow, and deliberate, and careful."

Lady Alys tapped one long enameled fingernail on the lace tablecloth, unmarred, around her place, by crumbs or spills. "I need to know, Miles. Is Captain Galeni likely to be a problem over this? I don't want any more surprises."

"What do you mean by problem? Be a problem, or make a problem?"

Alys's softly modulated voice grew edged. "That's exactly what I'm asking you."

"I ... don't know. I think he could be hurt. I'm sorry." Galeni was about to get frigging mangled, was what. God, Duv . . . this wasn't what I'd meant to do for you. Sorry, sorry, this is my day to be one sorry sod, all right.

"Well, ultimately, it's Laisa's choice," said Alys judiciously.

"How can poor Galeni compete with the Emperor?"

She gave him a slightly pitying look. "If she loves Galeni . . . there's no contest. If she doesn't . . . then there's no problem. Right?"

"I think my head hurts."

Lady Alys's lip curled slightly, in covert agreement; but her expression returned to its usual pleasant calm, as Gregor and the pony show approached again. Gregor helped Laisa down, managing something suspiciously close to an embrace in the process. He handed the horse off to its groom again, and another servant brought silver basins for the pair to wash the horse residue, if any, off their hands. A redundant gesture: the beast had to have been shampooed to within an inch of its life this morning. Miles would have had no hesitation about eating his lunch off its gleaming haunches.

Alys made a show of checking her chrono. "I'm sorry to break up this delightful afternoon, Gregor, but your meeting with Count Vortala and Minister Vann is only twenty minutes from now."

"Oh," Laisa, pink-cheeked and conscience-stricken, scrambled up from the chair she'd just reoccupied. "I'm keeping you from your work."

"Not with Lady Alys here to remind me of it," Gregor returned, with a glint that made Alys s smile thin, in turn. But Gregor rose obediently, and bowed over Laisa's hand—was he . . . ? Yes. He was going to kiss it. In fact, he turned it over and brushed his lips on her palm. Miles crossed his arms, and put his own hand over his mouth, and bit his tongue. Laisa closed her hand over the kissed spot like a woman capturing a butterfly, and smiled. Actually, she grinned. Gregor grinned back, looking exhilarated. Alys cleared her throat. Miles bit harder. Gregor and Laisa exchanged a long and remarkably idiotic look. Alys broke it up at last, took Laisa in hand, and bore her away, saying something brightly about a walk through the lower salons to view the inlaid panels along the way.

Gregor flung himself back half-sideways in his chair, one booted leg hooked over the arm, swinging. "Well. What do you think of her?"

"Dr. Toscane?"

"I wasn't asking your opinion of your Aunt Alys."

Miles studied Gregor's eager smile. No . . . this man was not asking for a critique. "Lovely."

"Isn't she?"

"Very intelligent."

"Brilliant. I wish you could have attended Racozy's staff meeting. Her presentation was a model of clarity."

No doubt, with every expert the trade association owned doubtless up all night to help prepare it ... still, Miles had run a staff briefing or two himself, in his day. He respected the effort involved. But Gregor was not so much soliciting Miles's opinion as asking for a confirmation of his own. I was never a yes-man.

"Very patriotic," Gregor burbled on, "in just the forward-looking, cooperative way your father had always hoped to achieve on Komarr."

"Yes, Sire."

"Beautiful eyes."

"Yes, Sire," Miles sighed. "Very, um, blue-green." Why is he doing this to me? Because the Count and Countess Vorkosigan weren't here, perhaps. He was using Miles as a stand-in for his parents, who, after all, were orphaned Gregor's foster parents as well. Good God, how were they going to react to this?

"Quick-witted ..."

"Yes, Sire. Very."

"Miles?"

"Yes, Sire?"

"Stop that."

"Um." Miles tried the tongue-biting trick again.

Gregor's boot stopped swinging; his face grew more serious, shadowed. He added quietly, "I'm terrified."

"Of rejection? I'm not the expert on women Ivan claims to be, but ... all the preliminary signs looked like go-aheads to me."

"No. Of ... what could happen later. This job could be the death of me. And of those closest to me."

The shade of Princess Kareen, not the vagrant breeze, chilled the air. It was perhaps as well for Gregor's untrusted sanity that the north wing where his mother had died had burned flat, and been rebuilt ghost-free.

"Ordinary men and women . . . die every day. For all sorts of reasons, from random chance to inexorable time. Death is not an Imperial monopoly."

Gregor looked at him. "So it's not," he said softly. He nodded decisively, as if Miles had just said something useful. What?

Miles tried to change the subject. "So what's up at your meeting with Vortala and Vann?"

"Oh, the usual. Their Imperial Lands Distribution committee wants favors for friends. I want their friends to present proof of competent usage plans."

"Ah." All South Continent matters, of no direct interest to the Vorkosigan's District. Miles wondered if he ought to pass the word to his father's Deputy that this would be the ideal week to lobby Gregor for favors for the District. In his current state of dreamy idiocy and sexual fog, the love-stricken Gregor might well grant anything. No . . . better for the Imperium to keep this temporary insanity a State secret. Marriage would cure Gregor quickly enough.

A Komarran Empress. God. What a nightmare for ImpSec. Illyan really would have that stroke he'd been threatening for years. "Have you warned Illyan about this yet?"

"I thought I'd send Lady Alys to apprise him, if things seemed hopeful. Fairly soon. She seems to have made it her department."

"She's the best ally and go-between you could have. Behave, and you'll keep her on your side. But have you thought through the political ramifications of this . . . marriage?" It was the first time anyone had spoken that word out loud, Miles realized.

"I've thought about nothing else for the past week. It could be a good thing, you know, Miles. A symbol of Imperial unity and all that."

It was more likely the Komarran underground would make it a symbol of Komarr being screwed again by Barrayar. Miles imagined the potential for vicious political satire, and winced. "Don't get your hopes up on that score."

Gregor shook his head. "At the last . . . none of that matters. I've finally found something for me. Really for me, not for the Imperium, not even for the Emperor. Just for me."

"Then grab it with both hands. And don't let the bastards take it away from you."

"Thank you," Gregor breathed.

Miles bowed himself out. He wondered if his new driver had killed anyone yet, and if the Count's car was still right-side-up. But mostly, he wondered how he could avoid Duv Galeni for the next few weeks.

CHAPTER TEN

It took Miles several days to extract himself from Ivan's clutches and escape south to the Vorkosigan's District alone, or almost alone. In the end, he formally pledged his word as Vorkosigan to Ivan that he wouldn't attempt either active or passive suicide stunts while gone. Ivan had reluctantly accepted this, but it was obvious from Martin's new wariness that Ivan had chosen to put an extra word in his ear about problems besides seizures to watch for in his employer, and, probably, some com numbers to call in case of emergencies or excessive weirdness. Now the kid thinks I'm crazy. Or at any rate, discharged because I was crazy, not crazy because I was discharged. Thanks, Ivan. But perhaps a few days in the peace and calm of Vorkosigan Surleau would ease Miles's mind, and Martin's too.

Miles knew they'd crossed the northern border of his home District when the first blue shadows of the Dendarii Mountains colored the horizon ahead of them, appearing out of the wavering air as suddenly as a mirage. "Turn to the east, here," Miles told Martin. "I've a mind to quarter the District. We'll pass just north of Hassadar. Have you ever been down this way before?"

"No, my lord." Dutifully, Martin banked the lightflyer into the morning sun; the canopy's polarization compensated for the glare. As Miles had suspected, Martin was shakier as a lightflyer pilot than a groundcar chauffeur. But the fail-safe systems made a lightflyer, a small, highly maneuverable, stripped-down cross between an antigrav sled and an airplane, almost impossible to crash. Somebody having a five-minute seizure might possibly manage the feat, though.

Sometimes the best way across a square was around three sides. . . . Not that the Vorkosigan's District was a square, exactly, more of a squashed, irregular parallelogram, some 350 kilometers from the northern strip of lowlands to the southern mountain passes, and about 500 kilometers east-to-west, skirting the mountain chain along its highest ranges. Only about the northern fifth was flat fertile plains, and of that, of course, only half was usable. The city of Hassadar appeared on their near-right; Miles directed Martin wide around the high-traffic areas, avoiding the complications of the city computer's navigational control of the lightflyer traffic.

"Hassadar's all right, I guess," said Vorbarr Sultana-born-and-bred Martin, gazing out over the city's earnest little effort at urban sprawl.

"It's as modern as any city on Barrayar," said Miles. "More modern than Vorbarr Sultana. Almost all of it was built after the Cetagandan Invasion, when my grandfather chose it for the new District capital."

"Yeah, but Hassadar's about all the District has," said Martin. "I mean, there's hardly anything else here."

"Well ... if by anything you mean cities, no. It's landlocked away from any chance at the coastal trade. It's always been agricultural, as much so as the mountains permit."

"There's not much to do up there in the mountains, judging from the number of hillmen who come to Vorbarr Sultana looking for work," said Martin. "We make jokes about them. Like, what do you call a Dendarii hillgirl who can outrun her brothers? A virgin." Martin chuckled.

Miles did not. A distinct chill fell in the cabin of the lightflyer. Martin glanced sideways, and shrank in his seat. "Sorry, m'lord," he muttered.

"I've heard it before. I've heard them all." In fact, his fathers Armsmen, all District men, used to make them up, but that was different, somehow. Some of them had been hillmen themselves, and not lacking in wit. "It's true that the Dendarii mountain folk have a lot fewer ancestors than you Vorbarr Sultana slugs, but that's because they failed to roll over and surrender to the Cetagandans." A slight exaggeration: the Cetagandans had occupied the lowlands, where they'd made handy targets for the hillmen led by the terribly young General Count Piotr Vorkosigan to descend upon. The Cetagandans should have moved their lines back fifty kilometers, instead of trying to push them up into the treacherous hills. The Vorkosigan's District had subsequently lagged behind others in development because it was among the most war-torn on Barrayar.

Well . . . that had been a good excuse two generations ago, even one generation ago. But now?

The Imperium plucks us Vorkosigans from our District, and uses us up, and never replaces what it borrows. And then makes jokes about our impoverishment. Odd . . . he'd never thought of his family's ardent service as a hidden tax on the District before.

Miles waited an extra ten minutes more than he'd originally intended to, then said, "Turn south here. Give us a thousand meters more of altitude, though."

"Yes, m'lord." The flyer banked to the right. After a few more minutes, the automated beacon on the ground detected them, and issued the standard bleat over the lightflyer's com, a recorded voice intoning, "Warning. You are entering a high radiation area. ..."

Martin paled. "M'lord? Should I continue on this heading?"

"Yes. We're all right at this altitude. But it's been years since I flew over the center of the wastelands. It's always interesting to check and see how things are progressing down there."

The farmland had given way to woodland many kilometers back. Now the woodland grew more sparse, the colors odder and grayer, scraggly and blighted in some areas, strangely dense in others. "I own almost all of that, y'know," Miles went on, gazing down at it. "I mean, personally. Not a figure of speech because my fathers the District Count. My grandfather left it to me. Not to my father like most of the rest of our property. I've always wondered what sort of a message to me that was supposed to be." Blighted land for a blighted scion, a comment on his early disabilities? Or resigned realization that Count Aral's life would run its course long before the blasted land recovered? "I've never set foot on it. I plan to put on radiation gear and visit it, sometime after I have children. They say there are some very strange plants and animals down there."

"There's no people, are there?" said Martin, staring downward in palpable unease. Without being told, he added a few hundred more meters of altitude.

"A few squatters and bandits, who don't expect to live long enough to have cancer or children. The District rangers round them up and run them out, from time to time. It looks deceptively recovered, in spots. In fact, the radioactivity levels in some areas have dropped by half in my lifetime. When I'm old, this will just begin to be usable again."

"Ten more years, m'lord?" said Martin.

Miles's lips twitched. "I was thinking, like, fifty more years, Martin," he said gently.

"Oh."

After a few more minutes, he craned his neck and stared out the canopy past Martin. "There on your left. That blotch is the site of Vorkosigan Vashnoi, the old District capital. Huh. It's going gray-green now. It used to be all black, still, when I was a kid. I wonder if it still glows in the dark?"

"We can come back after dark and look," Martin offered, after a slight pause.

"No . . . no." Miles settled back in his seat, and stared ahead at the mountains rising to the south. "That's enough."

"I could power up some more," said Martin presently, as the moldy colors on the landscape below fell behind to be replaced by healthier greens and browns and golds. "See what this flyer can do." His tone was decidedly longing.

"I know what it can do," said Miles. "And I have no reason to hurry, today. Another time, perhaps."

Martin had dropped a number of such hints, obviously finding his employers taste in travel staid and dull. Miles itched to take over the controls and give Martin a real thrill-ride, through the Dendarii Gorge. That triple-dip through the wild up-and-down drafts beside, and under, the main waterfall could force a sufficiently white-knuckled passenger to throw up.

Alas, even without the seizures, Miles didn't think he was physically or mentally—or morally—up to it anymore, not the way he and Ivan had used to do it, when slightly younger than Martin here. It was a miracle they hadn't killed themselves. At the time they had been convinced it was their superior Vorish skill, but in retrospect it looked more like divine intervention.

Ivan had started the game. Each cousin took a turn at the lightflyer's controls on runs through the deep winding gorge till the other either tapped out, martial arts-fashion, by banging on the dash, or else lost their last meal. For a proper run one had to disable several of the lightflyer's fail-safe circuits first, a trick Miles would just as soon Martin not learn about. Miles had pulled ahead of Ivan in the score early by the simple precaution of not eating first, till Ivan twigged to it and insisted they eat breakfast together, to assure fairness.

Miles won the final round by challenging Ivan to a night run. Ivan took the first turn, and brought them through alive, though he was white and sweating when they popped up over the last rim and leveled out.

Miles lined up for his run, and turned off the flyers lights. All credit to Ivan's nerve, he didn't break and claw, screaming, for the (disabled) emergency-eject button till he realized his cousin was also flying the speed-pattern through the gorge with his eyes closed.

Miles, of course, didn't bother to mention he'd flown the identical pattern over sixty times in daylight during the prior three days, gradually darkening the canopy until fully opaqued.

That had been the last round of that game. Ivan never challenged him again.

"What are you smiling about, m'lord?" Martin inquired.

"Ah . . . nothing, Martin. Bank right here, and head up across the middle of that wooded area. I'm curious to see how my forest is getting along."

The absentee Vorkosigan sires had gone in heavily for low-supervision sorts of farming. After fifty years of forestry, the fine hardwood trees were almost ready for sustained selective cutting. In another ten years, say? Patches of oak, maple, elm, hickory, and vesper-birch vied in brilliance in the autumn sun. A dark green grace note was added here and there on the steep hillsides by the genetically engineered winter-hardy ebony, a new strain—or rather, new to Barrayar—imported just three decades ago. Miles wondered where it would all end up: in furniture, houses, and other common things? He hoped some of it at least would be used beautifully. For musical instruments, say, or sculpture or inlay.

Miles frowned at a column of smoke rising several ridges away. "Go over there," he told Martin, pointing. But upon arrival he discovered it was all right; it was just his terraforming crew, burning off another hillside of poisonous native scrub prior to treating the soil with organic waste of Earth-DNA origin and planting the tiny saplings.

Martin circled above them, and the half-dozen men in breath masks looked up and waved cordially, all unknowing who observed them. "Give them a wing-waggle back," Miles told Martin, who complied. Miles wondered what it would be like, to do that job all day every day, terraforming Barrayar the old low-tech way, meter by meter. But at least it would be easy to look back and measure your life's accomplishment.

They left the forest plantation and continued west over the rugged red-brown hills, all patched and embroidered here and there with Earth-descended colors, marking human habitation or feral growth. The gray mountains, snow-dusted, marched ever higher to their left. Miles settled back and closed his eyes a while, weary for no reason; he was eating and sleeping as well as he ever did. At last, at an inquiring murmur from Martin, he opened them to spot the distant glimmer of the long lake at Vorkosigan Surleau, winding some 40 kilometers westward through the patchy hills.

They passed over the village at the lake's foot, and the ruined and burned-out castle occupying the headland above it, that had been the original reason for the villages existence. Miles had Martin fly all the way to the headwaters and back before they circled to land on the Vorkosigans' property. There were easily a hundred new residences dotting the lakeside further up, around the curve of the few kilometers of shoreline belonging to his family, that were now owned by people from Hassadar or Vorbarr Sultana. They were the source of the population explosion of ... well, at least a dozen boats marring, or decorating depending on your point of view, the blue surface of the waters. The village was growing too, serving the vacationers and retirees as well as the few Old Vor estates nearby.

The Vorkosigans' summer place had formerly been a long, two-story stone guard barracks for the castle, now converted to a graceful residence with a fine view over the lake. Miles had Martin bring the lightflyer down on the landing pad by the garage, over the ridge.

"To the house, my lord?" Martin inquired, unloading their bags.

This house at least had a caretaker couple in residence to keep it alive and maintain the extensive grounds; it would not have the dark and tomblike atmosphere of the mansion in the capital.

"No . . . leave those for now. I want to visit the stables first."

Miles led off down the path to the collection of outbuildings and Earth-green pastures in the first little valley back from the lake. The teenaged girl from the village who looked after the handful of remaining horses came out to greet them, and Martin, who had obviously been dutifully prepared to endure several days of unalleviated rural boredom in his eccentric lord's company, brightened right up. Miles left them to get acquainted, and went to the pasture gate.

His horse, who had picked up the rather unfortunate name of Fat Ninny from Miles s grandfather in the first few weeks of his life as a foal, came to greet Miles at his call, nickering, and Miles faithfully rewarded him with peppermints from his pocket. He petted the big roans wide velvety nose. The beast, rising . . . twenty-three years old now?—had more gray among his red hairs, and wheezed from his canter across the pasture. So ... dare he ride, with this seizure-thing? Probably not the sort of days-long camping trips up into the hills he most enjoyed. If he trained Martin to be his spotter, he could perhaps risk a few turns around the pastures. He wasn't likely to break any of his synthetic bones, falling off, and he trusted Ninny not to step on him.

Swimming, the other main pleasure of life at Vorkosigan Surleau, was right out. Sailing was dubious; he'd have to wear a life jacket constantly and take Martin. Could Martin even swim, let alone play lifeguard to a seizuring man overboard while simultaneously not letting the boat get away from him? It seemed rather a lot to ask. Well . . . the lake's waters were chilling with the onset of autumn anyway.

It was not by accident that Miles's thirtieth birthday came up the week following, while he lingered in quiet ennui by the lakeside. It was the best place to ignore the event, unlike the capital where he was likely to be plagued with acquaintances and relatives, or at least Ivan, ragging him on the topic, or worse, inflicting a party on him. Though Ivan would doubtless be restrained by the knowledge that his turn would be next, in a couple of months. Anyway, Miles would really only be one day older, just like any other day. Right?

The day in question dawned foggy and damp from the previous day's melancholy rains that had so suited Miles's mood, but it was apparent from the high pale blue directly overhead that the weather would develop into something warm and hazy and perfect. It was also apparent that he was not going to be permitted to ignore it all, when the first call of congratulations came over the houses comconsole from a primly amused Lady Alys. Could Ivan be far behind? If he didn't find some way to hide, he risked being tied up all day on the blasted thing.

He snagged a pre-breakfast roll from the kitchen on the way through, and walked out along the hillside path to the garden-and-graveyard. Formerly the last resting place of the barracks's guardsmen, it had been taken over by the Vorkosigans as their family plot after the destruction of Vorkosigan Vashnoi. Miles sat companionably for a while beside Sergeant Bothari's grave, nibbling the roll and watching the rising sun burn redly through the morning mists above Vorkosigan Surleau.

Then he strolled over to old General Piotr's plot, and stared down at it for long minutes. Time was he had stamped and shouted to that mockingly silent stone, whispered and pleaded. But the old man and he seemed to have nothing further to say to each other. Why not?

I'm talking to the wrong damned grave, is the problem, Miles decided abruptly. Ruthlessly, he turned and strode back to the house to wake up Martin, who would sleep till noon if allowed. He knew someplace he could go where the comconsole could not pursue him. And he desperately needed to talk to a certain small lady there.

"So where are we headed, m'lord?" Martin inquired, settling into the lightflyer's pilots seat, and flexing his fingers.

"We're going to a little mountain community called Silvy Vale." Miles leaned over and entered instructions into the vid map/navigator program, which projected a color-enhanced 3-D grid for them. "There's a particular spot I want you to land, in this little valley here, just above this narrow fork. It's a cemetery, actually. There should be just enough space between the trees to put the lightflyer down. Or there was, the last time I was up there. It's a pretty place, beside the brook. The sun comes down through the trees . . . maybe I should have packed a picnic. It's about a four day-walk from here, or two and a half days on horseback. Or something under an hour by lightflyer."

Martin nodded, and powered up; they rose above the ridge, and turned southeast. "I bet I could get you there faster," Martin offered.

"No ..."

"Are we going the long way around again?"

Miles hesitated. Now that he was in the air, his urgency was slackening, to be replaced by seeping dread. And you thought apologizing to the Emperor was hard. "Yeah. I've been meaning to show you a few facts of life about mountain downdrafts and lightflyers. Head south and west here, toward those peaks."

"Very good, sir," said Martin, practicing his best Vor lord's servant's style, though spoiling the effect immediately thereafter by adding, "A hell of a lot better than another riding lesson." Martin and Ninny had not gotten along as well as Miles had expected them to. Martin clearly preferred lightflyers.

There followed an hour of interesting moments in and around Dendarii Gorge. Even city-boy Martin was impressed by the grandeur of place, Miles was pleased to note. They took it a lot slower than he and Ivan ever had; the lessons made their breakfasts merely a mild regret, and not an immediate emergency. But eventually, Miles ran out of delays to offer, and they turned due east again.

"So what's to do in this Silvy Vale place?" asked Martin. "Friends? Scenery?"

"Not . . . exactly. When I was about your brothers age—I'd just graduated from the Imperial Service Academy, in fact—the Count-my-Father stuck me, that is, assigned me to be his Voice in a case that was brought before the Counts Court. He sent me up to Silvy Vale to investigate and judge a murder. An infanticide for mutation, very much in the old traditional style."

Martin made a face. "Hillmen," he said in revulsion.

"Mm. It turned out to be more complex than I'd thought, even after I managed to tag the right suspect. The little girl—it was a little girl four days old who was killed, for being born with the cat's mouth—her name was Raina Csurik. She'd be getting close to ten years old by now, if she'd lived. I want to talk to her."

Martins brows rose. "Do you, uh . . . talk to dead people a lot, m'lord?"

"Sometimes."

Martin's mouth crooked in an uncertain, we-hope-this-is-a-joke smile. "Do they ever talk back?"

"Sometimes . . . what, don't you ever talk to dead people?"

"I don't know any. Except you, m'lord," Martin modified this slightly.

"I was only a would-be corpse." Give yourself time, Martin. Your acquaintance will surely expand in time. Miles knew lots of dead people.

But even on that long list, Raina held a special place. After he'd peeled away all the Imperial pomp and nonsense, exhausted all the vying for promotion, waded through all the idiot regulations and dark nasty corners of military life . . . when it wasn't a goddamn game anymore, when things went real, and really scary, with lives and souls too going down the flash-disposer for it . . . Raina was the one symbol of his service that still made sense. He had a horrible feeling he'd somehow lost touch with Raina too, lately, in all this mess.

Had he got so wound up with playing Naismith, and with winning that game, that he'd forgotten what he was playing for? Raina was one prisoner Naismith would never rescue, down underground these ten years.

There was a probably apocryphal tale told of Miles's ancestor Count Selig Vorkosigan, collecting—or more likely, attempting to collect—taxes from his District's people, no more thrilled by the prospect then than they were now. One impoverished widow, left with her feckless late husband's debts, offered up the only thing she had, her son's drum-playing, son included. Selig, it was said, accepted the drumming but gave back the boy. Self-serving Vorish propaganda, no doubt. Naismith had been Miles's own best sacrifice, his all in all, what he came up with when he turned himself inside-out with the trying. Barrayar's galactic interests seemed very far away in this mountain morning light, but serving those interests had been his part. Naismith was the drum-song he'd played, but Vorkosigan was the one who'd played it.

So he knew exactly how he'd lost Naismith, misstep by misstep. He could touch and name every link in that disastrous chain of events. Where the hell had he lost Vorkosigan?

When they landed, he would tell Martin to take a walk, or go fly the lightflyer around some more. This was one conversation with the dead he didn't want a witness to. He'd failed Gregor, yet faced him, failed his family, and would have to face them soon. But facing Raina . . . that was going to hurt like needle grenade fire.

Oh, Raina. Small lady. Please. What do I do now? He hunched away from Martin, very silent, his forehead leaning against the canopy, eyes closed, head aching.

Martins voice broke into his increasingly agonized reverie. "M'lord? What should I do? I can't land in the valley where you said, it's all water."

"What?" Miles sat up, and opened his eyes, and stared out in astonishment.

"There seems to be a lake there," said Martin.

Indeed. Across the narrow shoulder where the two descending streams had met now sat a small hydroelectric dam. Behind it, filling the steep valleys, a winding sheet of water reflected the hazy morning blue. Miles rechecked the vid map, just to be sure, and then the date on the map. "This map's only two years old. But this sure as hell isn't on it. But . . . this is the place, all right."

"Do you still want to land?"

"Yes, um . . . try to set down on the shore there on the east side, as close to the mark as you can."

It wasn't an easy task, but Martin at last found a spot and eased the lightflyer down among the trees. He popped the canopy, and Miles climbed out, and stood on the steep bank, and peered down at the clear brown water. He could only see a few meters into it. A scattering of white tree stumps stuck up out of it like bones. Martin, curious, followed him, and stood by his side, as if to help him look.

"So ... is the cemetery still under there, or have the folk of Silvy Vale moved their graves? And if so, where have they moved them to?" Miles muttered.

Martin shrugged. The blank and placid mirror of the water gave no answer either.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

After Martin jockeyed the lightflyer up out of the trees, Miles located the clearing he sought about a kilometer away. He had Martin put them down in the yard in front of a cabin built of weathered silvery wood. The cabin, with its familiar full-length porch giving a fine view over the valley and the new lake, appeared unchanged, though there were a couple of new outbuildings downslope.

A man came out onto the porch to see what was landing in his yard. It was not the balding, one-armed Speaker Karal. This was a total stranger, a tall fellow with a neatly trimmed black beard. But he leaned, interested, on the porch railing of bark-peeled sapling as if he owned the place. Miles climbed out of the lightflyer, and stood by it for an uncertain moment, staring up at the man, rehearsing explanations for himself and secretly glad of Martins bulk. Perhaps he should have brought a trained bodyguard.

But the stranger's face lit with recognition and excitement. "Lord Vorkosigan!" he cried. He ran down off the porch two steps at a time, and strode toward Miles, his hands out in greeting, smiling broadly. "Great to see you again!" His smile faded. "Nothing wrong, I hope?"

Well, this one remembered Miles, all right, from that judgment of nearly a decade ago. "No, this is purely a social visit," Miles offered, as the man came up and shook his hand—both his hands—with enthusiastic cordiality. "Nothing official."

The man stepped back, looking down at his face, and his smile turned into a sly grin. "Don't you know who I am?"

"Urn . . ."

"I'm Zed Karal."

"Zed?" Zed Karal, Speaker Karal's middle son, had been twelve years old. . . . Miles did a little quick math. Twenty-two, or thereabouts. Yeah. "The last time I saw you, you were shorter than me."

"Well, my ma was a good cook."

"Indeed. I remember." Miles hesitated. "Was? Are your parents, um . . ."

"Oh, they're fine. Just not here. My older brother married this lowlander girl from Seligrad, and went there to work and live. Ma and Da go down to live with them for the winter, 'cause the winters are getting hard for them up here. Ma helps with their kids."

"Is . . . Karal not the Speaker of Silvy Vale anymore, then?"

"No, we have a new Speaker, as of about two years ago. A young hotshot full of Progressive ideas he picked up living in Hassadar, just your type. I think you'll remember him all right. Name's Lem Csurik." Zed's smile broadened.

"Oh!" said Miles. For the first time today a smile tugged at his own lips. "Really. I'd ... like to see him."

"I'll take you to him right now, if you'll give me a lift. He's probably working on the clinic today. You won't know where that is, it's bright-new. Just a second." Zed dashed back into his cabin to put something in order, a hint of that former twelve-year-old in his run. Miles felt like banging his head on the lightflyer's canopy, to try to force his spinning brain back into gear.

Zed returned, to hop into the lightflyer's backseat, and give Martin a string of directions interspersed with running commentary as they rose into the air and passed over the next ridge. He brought them down about two kilometers away in front of the rising frame of a six-room building, the biggest structure Miles had ever seen in Silvy Vale. Power lines were already strung to it, feeding a rack of pack-rechargers for power tools. Half a dozen men paused in their labors to watch them land.

Zed clambered out and waved. "Lem, hey Lem! You'll never guess who's here!" Miles followed him toward the building site; Martin sat at the controls and watched in bemusement.

"My lord!" Lem Csurik's recognition was instantaneous too; but then, Miles's appearance was, ah, distinctive. Miles could probably have picked Lem out of the crowd in turn with a moment's study. He was still the wiry hillman of about Miles's age that Miles remembered, though obviously much happier than the day a decade back when he'd been falsely accused of murder, and even more confident-looking than the time Miles had briefly seen him in Hassadar six years ago. Lem too went for an engulfing two-handed greeting.

"Speaker Csurik. Congratulations," Miles said in return. "I see you've been busy."

"Oh, you don't know the half of it, my lord! Come see. We're getting our own clinic—it's going to serve the whole area. I'm pushing to have it undercover before the first snow flies, and all ready by Winterfair. That's when we're getting our doctor, a real one, not just the medtech who flies the circuit once a week. The doc's one of your lady mother's scholarship students from the new school in Hassadar; he's going to serve us here four years in exchange for his schooling. Winterfair's when he's supposed to graduate. We're fixing him up a cabin, too, upslope; it's got a real nice view—"

Lem introduced his crew all around, and took Miles on a tour of, if not the clinic yet, the dream of the clinic that burned in his imagination so hotly, Miles could see its ghostly outlines all complete.

"I saw the electric dam in the valley, coming in," Miles said, when Lem at last paused for breath. "Where did that come from?"

"We built it," said Lem proudly. "You can bet that was a job and a half, with so few power tools. Had to make the power to have the power, of course. We'd been waiting and waiting for the powersat receptor the District promised us, but we were so far down the list, we'd still be waiting. Then I got to figuring. I went over to Dos'tovar and looked at their hydro plant, which they'd had for years. It was low-tech, but it worked. I got a couple of the fellows from there to come help us with the dam, picking the best site and all, and got an engineer from Hassadar whose house I'd helped build to come help us with the electrical system guts. He gets the use of a cabin up from the new lake for a vacation place in the summer in return. We still owe for the generators, but that's all."

"That was the best site, was it?"

"Oh, yes. The shortest span and the biggest drop available, and the most water-flow. We'll outgrow it in time, but that's the whole point. Without basic power, this place was in stasis. Now we can grow. Couldn't have won the lottery from the District for the doctor without power for the clinic, for one thing."

"You didn't let anything stop you, did you?"

"Well, m'lord, you know who I learned that from."

Harra, his wife, of course. Raina's mother. Miles nodded. "Speaking of Harra, where is she today?" He had come up here wanting only to stand silent before the dead, but he was now beginning to want very much to talk to Harra.

"Teaching at the school. I built on another room—we have two teachers now, you know. There's a girl Harra trained who does the little ones, and Harra teaches the older ones."

"Can I, ah, see it?"

"Harra'd skin me alive if I let you get away without seeing her! Come on, I'll take you over there now."

Zed, having turned Miles over to the responsible authority, waved good-bye and headed back home, disappearing among the trees. Lem spoke briefly to his crew, and took over Zed's place as native guide in the back seat of the lightflyer.

Another short hop brought them to an older and more traditional structure: a long cabin with two doors and fieldstone fireplaces on both ends. A large hand-carved sign with scrolling letters above the porch labeled it The Raina Csurik School. Lem led Miles through the door on the left, Martin trailing to linger uncertainly just outside. About twenty teenagers of various sizes sat at handmade wooden desks with comconsole lap-links atop them, listening to the vigorously gesturing woman at the head of the room.

Harra Csurik was still tall and lean, as Miles remembered her. Her straight straw-blond hair was tied back neatly at the nape of her neck, hill-woman fashion, and she wore a hill woman's simple dress, though clean and well made. Like the majority of her students, her feet were bare in this mild weather. But her protuberant gray eyes were lively and warm. She broke off her lecture abruptly as she saw Miles and Lem.

"Lord Vorkosigan! Well, I never expected this!" She advanced upon him much as Zed and Lem had, but not content with a handshake, she hugged him. At least she didn't pick him up bodily. Miles concealed his startlement, recovered his wits quickly enough to hug her back, and took both her hands in a half-swing around as she released him.

"Hello, Harra. You look splendid."

"I haven't seen you since Hassadar."

"Yes, I ... should have been round long before this. But they kept me busy."

"I have to tell you, it meant the world to me, when you came to my graduation from the teacher's college there."

"That was a piece of good luck, that I was on-planet at the time. No merit in it."

"That's a matter of opinion. Come, see. . . ." She towed him toward the front of the room. "See, kids, who's come to see us! It's your own Lord Vorkosigan!"

They stared at him with interest, rather than suspicion or revulsion, their eyes shifting to check the odd little man in the flesh before them against the picture on the wall at the front of their classroom. Above the vid projection space three still-portraits were lined up, two by mandate: one of Emperor Gregor in the splendid and gaudy parade dress uniform, and one of their District Count, Miles's father, staring out sternly in the most formal brown-and-silver livery of the Vorkosigans. The third portrait was nonregulation—public offices were not normally required to display a portrait of their Count's heir as well, but Miles's own face smirked back at him from up there. It was one of his younger and stiffer scans, wearing Imperial Service dress greens with light blue ensign's rectangles on the collar. It had to date from his Academy graduation, because no silver Eye-of-Horus pins yet glittered there. Where the devil had Harra obtained it?

She displayed him as proudly to her students as any show-and-tell exhibitor, excited as a six-year-old with a jar of pet bugs. He hadn't come to Silvy Vale expecting to see anyone, let alone speak publicly, and felt decidedly underdressed in an old backcountry-style tunic and worn black trousers left over from a set of Service fatigues, not to mention the battered Service boots he'd muddied by the reservoir. But he managed a few generic, hearty Well done, well done, comments that seemed to please everyone. Harra took him around the front porch into the next room and repeated the show, throwing the young woman teaching there into terminal flusterment, and raising the younger students' wriggle-quotient to something near explosion.

As they were coming back around on the porch, Miles seized Harra's hand to slow her down for a moment. "Harra—I didn't come up here for a surprise inspection, for heaven's sake. I just came up to ... well, to tell you the truth, I just wanted to do a little memorial burning on Raina's grave." The tripod and brazier and aromatic wood were stashed in the back of the lightflyer.

"That was good of you, m'lord," said Harra. Miles made a small throwaway gesture, but she shook her head in denial of his denial.

Miles went on, "It seems I'd need a boat to do it now, and I don't want to risk setting fire to the boat I'm sitting in. Or did you folks move the graveyard?"

"Yes, before it was flooded, people moved some of the graves, those who wanted to. We picked a real nice new spot up on the ridge, overlooking the old site. We didn't move my mother's grave, of course. I left her down there. Let even her burial be buried, no burnings for her." Harra grimaced; Miles nodded understanding. "Raina's grave . . . well, I guess it was because the ground was so damp down there by the creek, and she only had that bit of a makeshift crate for a coffin, and she was so tiny anyway . . . we couldn't find her to move. She's gone back to the soil, I guess. I didn't mind. It seemed right, when I thought about it. I really think of this school as her best memorial, anyway. Every day I come here to teach is like burning an offering, only better. Because it makes, instead of destroys." She nodded once, resolute and calm.

"I see."

She looked at him more closely. "You all right, m'lord? You look really tired. And all pale. You haven't been sick or something, have you?"

He supposed three months of death qualified as about as sick as one could get. "Well, yes. Or something. But I'm recovering."

"Oh. All right. Are you headed anywhere, after this?"

"Not really. I'm sort of ... on holiday."

"I'd like you to meet our lads, mine and Lem's. Lem's Ma or his sister take care of them while I'm teaching. Won't you come home for lunch with us?"

He'd intended to be back at Vorkosigan Surleau by lunchtime. "Kids?"

"We've two, now. A little boy four and a little girl one."

No one was using uterine replicators up here yet; she'd borne them in her body like her lost firstborn. Dear God but this woman worked. It was an invitation he could not possibly escape. "I'd be honored."

"Lem, show Lord Vorkosigan around a minute—" Harra went back inside, to consult with her team teacher and then with her students, and Lem dutifully took Miles on an outside tour of the architectural highlights of the school. A couple of minutes later, children exploded from the building, shrieking off happily in all directions in early dismissal.

"I didn't mean to disrupt your routine," Miles protested futilely. He was in for it now. He could not for three worlds betray those smiles of welcome.

They descended by lightflyer unannounced upon Lem's sister, who rose to the challenge smoothly. The lunch she provided was, thank God, light. Miles dutifully met and admired Csurik children, nieces, and nephews. He was hijacked by them and taken on a stroll through the woods, and viewed a favorite swimming hole. He waded gravely along with them on the smooth stones with his boots off, till his feet were numb with the chill, and in a voice of Vorish authority pronounced it a most excellent swimming hole, perhaps the finest in his District. He was obviously an anomaly of some fascination, an adult almost their own size.

What with one thing and another, it was late afternoon before they arrived back at the school. Miles took one look at the mob of people streaming into the wide yard, bearing dishes and baskets and flowers, musical instruments and pitchers and jugs, chairs and benches and trestles and boards, firewood and tablecloths, and his heart sank. Despite all his efforts to avoid such things today, it seemed he was in for a surprise party after all.

Phrases like, We should go before dark, Martin's not used to flying in the mountains, died on his lips. They'd be lucky if they got out of here before tomorrow morning. Or—he noted the stone pitchers of Dendarii Mountain maple mead, the deadliest alcoholic beverage ever invented by man—tomorrow afternoon.

It took him a meal, sunset, a bonfire, and rather a lot of carefully rationed sips of maple mead, but eventually, he actually relaxed and began to enjoy it. Then the music began, and enjoyment became no effort at all. Off to the side Martin, at first inclined to turn up his nose a bit at the rustic homemade quality of it all, found himself teaching city dances to a group of eager teens. Miles bit back inflicting any prudent warnings on the boy, such as Maple mead may go down smooth and sweet, but it destroys cell membranes coming back up. Some things you had to learn for yourself, at certain ages. Miles danced traditional steps with Harra, and other women until he lost count. A couple of older folk, who'd been there at his judgment of a decade ago, nodded respectfully at him despite his capering. It was not, after all, a party for him, despite the bombardment of birthday congratulations and jokes. It was a party for Silvy Vale. If he was the excuse for it, well, it was the most use he'd been to anybody for weeks.

But as the party died down with the bonfires embers, his sense of incompletion grew. He'd come up here to . . . what? To try to bring his dragging depression to some kind of head, perhaps, like lancing a boil, painful but relieving. Disgusting metaphor, but he was thoroughly sick of himself. He wanted to take a jug of mead, and finish his talk with Raina. Bad idea, probably. He might end up weeping drunkenly by the reservoir, and drowning himself as well as his sorrows, poor repayment to Silvy Vale for the nice party, and betrayal of his word to Ivan. Did he seek healing, or destruction? Either. It was this formless state in between that was unbearable.

In the end, somehow, after midnight, he fetched up by the waterside after all. But not alone. Lem and Harra came with him, and sat on logs too. The moons were both high, and made faint silky patterns on the wavelets, and turned the rising mist in the ravines to silver smoke. Lem had charge of the jug of mead, and distributed it judiciously, otherwise keeping a mellow silence.

It was not the dead Miles needed to talk to, in the dark, he realized. It was the living. Useless to confess to the dead; absolution was not in their power. But I'll trust your Speaking, Harra, as you once trusted mine.

"I have to tell you something," Miles said to Harra.

"Knew there was something wrong," she said. "I hope you're not dying or something."

"No."

"I was worried it might be something like that. A lot of muties don't live very long lives, even without someone to cut their throats."

"Vorkosigan does it backwards. I had my throat cut all right, but it was for life, not for death. It's a long story and the details are classified, but I ended up in a cryo-chamber out in the galactic backbeyond last year. When they thawed me out, I had some medical problems. Then I did something stupid. Then I did something really stupid, which was to lie about the first thing. And then I got caught. And then I got discharged. Whatever it was about my achievements you admired, that inspired you, it's all gone now. Thirteen years of career effort down the waste-disposer in one flush. Hand me that jug." He swallowed sweet fire, and handed it back to Lem, who passed it to Harra and back to himself. "Of all the things I thought I might be by age thirty, civilian was never on the list."

The moonlight rippled on the water. "And you told me to stand up straight and speak the truth," said Harra, after a long pause. "Does this mean you'll be spending more time in the District?"

"Maybe."

"Good."

"You're ruthless, Harra," Miles groaned.

The bugs sang their soft chorus in the woods, a tiny organic moonlight sonata. "Little man"—Harra's voice in the dark was as sweet and deadly as maple mead—"my mother killed my daughter. And was judged for it in front of all of Silvy Vale. You think I don't know what public shame is? Or waste?"

"Why d'you think I'm telling all this to you?"

Harra was silent for long enough for Lem to pass around the stone jug one last time, in the dim moonlight and shadows. Then she said, "You go on. You just go on. There's nothing more to it, and there's no trick to make it easier. You just go on."

"What do you find on the other side? When you go on?"

She shrugged. "Your life again. What else?"

"Is that a promise?"

She picked up a pebble, fingered it, and tossed it into the water. The moon-lines bloomed and danced. "It's an inevitability. No trick. No choice. You just go on."

Miles got Martin and the lightflyer in the air again by noon the next day. Martin's eyes were red and puffy, and his face had a pale greenish cast worthy of a speed run through the Dendarii Gorge. He flew very gently and carefully, which suited Miles exactly. He was not very conversational, but he did manage a, "Did you ever find what you were looking for, m'lord?"

"The light is clearer up here in these mountains than anywhere else on Barrayar, but. . . no. It was here once, but it's not here now." Miles twisted in his seat straps, and stared back over his shoulder at the rugged receding hills. These people need a thousand things. But they don't need a hero. At least, not a hero like Admiral Naismith. Heroes like Lem and Harra, yes.

Martin squinted, perhaps not appreciating that light just at present.

After a time, Miles asked, "How old is middle-age, Martin?"

"Oh . . ." Martin shrugged. "Thirty, I guess."

"That's what I'd always thought, too." Though he'd once heard the Countess define it as ten years older than whatever you were, a moveable feast.

"I had a professor at the Imperial Service Academy once," Miles went on, as the hills grew more gentle beneath them, "who taught the introduction to tactical engineering course. He said he never bothered changing his tests from term to term to prevent cheating, because while the questions were always the same, the answers changed. I'd thought he was joking."

"Unh?" said Martin dutifully.

"Never mind, Martin," Miles sighed. "Just go on."

CHAPTER TWELVE

After their return to the lake house, and a sparing lunch from which Martin excused himself altogether, Miles locked himself into the comconsole chamber and prepared to face the expected spate of messages forwarded from Vorbarr Sultana. The birthday congratulations were each the measure of their senders; grave and straight from Gregor, tinged with cautious mockery from Ivan, and falling into a range in between from the handful of acquaintances who knew he was on-planet.

Mark's tight-beam recording from Beta Colony was . . . Markian. His mockery was an awkward imitation of Ivan's, edgier and more self-conscious. From the stilted would-be flippancy Miles gathered this was not the message's first draft. But it was, Miles realized upon reflection, very probably the first time in his life Mark had ever had to compose a birthday greeting to anyone. Keep trying, Mark, you'll learn how to be a human being yet.

Miles's judicious smugness faded as he realized this compelled him to compose a return message. It was obvious Mark hadn't heard the news about Miles's change of status yet. How the devil was he going to tell Mark about it in a way his clone-brother couldn't construe as blame? He set the problem aside, temporarily.

He saved the one from his parents for last. It had been beamed, not mailed. Therefore it would have left Sergyar in the government data tight-beam, and been express-jumped through the wormhole barriers between receivers, taking little more than a day en route; shipped message disks took as long to travel between the two worlds as a person, almost two weeks. This was, therefore, the latest news, and would contain their reactions to the latest news they'd had. He took a deep breath, and keyed it up.

They'd sat back from the vid receptor, to both fit into the scan, and so appeared as small smiling half-figures over his vid plate. Count Aral Vorkosigan was a thick-bodied, white-haired man in his early seventies, dressed in his brown-and-silver Vorkosigan House uniform; this message must have been recorded sometime during his working day. The Countess wore a Vor lady's afternoon-style jacket and skirt in green, ditto. Red roan hair, like Ninny's even to the having of more gray in it, was held back from her broad forehead by fancy combs in her usual style. She was as tall as her husband, and her gray eyes danced with amusement.

They do not know. No one's told them yet. Miles knew this with sinking certainty before either even opened their mouth.

"Hello, love," the Countess began. "Congratulations for reaching thirty alive."

"Yes," the Count seconded. "We truly wondered if you would make it, many times. But here we all are. Somewhat the worse for wear, but after a deep contemplation of the alternative, happy to be so. I may be far from you here on Sergyar, but I can look in the mirror every morning, and remember you by all these white hairs."

"It's not true, Miles," objected the Countess, grinning. "He was already going gray when I met him, at age forty-odd. I didn't get my gray hairs till after, though."

"We miss you," the Count continued. "Do insist your travel to your next mission assignment be routed through Sergyar, coming or going or both, and plan at least a short layover. There's so much going on here of significance to the future of the Imperium. I know you'd be interested in seeing some of it."

"I'll light up Simon's life if he doesn't send you by," the Countess added. "You can pass that on to him as my personal threat. Alys tells me you've been home for several weeks. Why haven't we heard from you? Partying too hard with Ivan to take ten minutes out to talk to your aged parents?"

Lady Alys too had declined, it appeared, to be the bearer of even the non-classified version of the bad news, and she was ordinarily the Countess's main gossip-pipeline to everything of Vorish interest in Vorbarr Sultana and Gregor's court.

"Speaking of Alys," the Countess went on, "she tells me Gregor has met This Girl—and you can just hear the capital letters in her voice. What do you know about this? Have you met her? Should we be happy, or worried, or what?"

"An Imperial marriage to a Komarran," said Count Vorkosigan—once nicknamed "the Butcher of Komarr" by his political enemies, most of whom he'd survived—"is fraught with potential complications. But at this late date, if Gregor will only do his duty and produce a proper Crown Prince somehow, I'll do whatever I can to support the project. And all of us in my generation who were in the pool of potential heirs will breathe a great sigh of relief. Assure Gregor of my full support. I trust his judgment." The Count's face grew oddly wistful. "Does she seem like a nice girl? Gregor deserves a little personal happiness, to make up for all the nonsense on the other side that he bears for us all."

"Alys said she'll do," said the Countess, "and I trust Alys's judgment. Though I don't know if the young lady quite realizes what she's getting into. Please assure Dr. Toscane of my full support, Miles, whatever she decides to do."

"Surely she'll accept, if Gregor asks her," said the Count.

"Only if she's so head-over-heels in love as to have lost all sense of self-preservation," said the Countess. "Believe me, you have to have lost your mind to marry a Barrayaran Vor. Let's hope she has." Miles's parents exchanged peculiar smiles.

"So let's see," the Count went on. "What were we doing at age thirty? Can you remember back that far, Cordelia?"

"Barely. I was in the Betan Astronomical Survey, screwing up my first chance at being promoted to captain. It came around again the next year, though, and you bet I grabbed it then. Without which I would never have met Aral when and where I did and you wouldn't exist, Miles, so I don't wish to change a bit of it now."

"I was a captain by twenty-eight," the Count reminisced smugly. The Countess made a face at him. "Ship duty suited me. I didn't get stuck at a desk for another four or five years, when Ezar and the Headquarters hotshots began planning the annexation of Komarr." His face grew serious again. "Good luck to Gregor on this thing of his. I hope he can succeed where ... I did not succeed so well as I'd hoped to. Thank God for a new generation and clean starts." He and the Countess glanced at each other and he finished, "So long, boy. Communicate, dammit."

The Countess added, "Take good care of yourself, kiddo, please? Communicate, dammit." Their forms twinkled into thin air.

Miles sighed. I can't put this off much longer, I really can't.

He did manage to put it off one more day, by having Martin fly him back to Vorbarr Sultana the following morning. Ma Kosti served Miles lunch in splendid isolation in the Yellow Parlor; she'd obviously worked hard to make it as proper as possible, perhaps studying up on her new job from etiquette manuals, or getting tips from other Vors' servants in the area. He ate dutifully, despite an urge to gather up his plates and go join Martin and his mother in the kitchen. Certain aspects of the Vor lord role seemed remarkably stupid, at times.

Afterwards, he went to his room to finally face the task of composing a message to his parents. He'd recorded and erased three different tries—one too glum, one too flippant, one way too full of ugly sarcasms—when an incoming call interrupted his endeavors. He welcomed it despite the fact that it was Ivan. Ivan was in uniform, calling on his lunch break, perhaps.

"Ah, you're back in town. Good," Ivan began. That Good seemed quite heartfelt, apparently on more than one level. "Feeling better for the little vacation in the hills, I trust?"

"Somewhat," Miles said cautiously. How had Ivan found out so soon that he was back?

"Good," Ivan repeated. "Now. I've been wondering. Have you done anything toward getting your head looked at yet? Seen a doctor?"

"Not yet."

"Made an appointment anywhere?"

"No."

"Hm. Mother asked me. Gregor'd asked her, it seems. Guess who's at the bottom of that chain of command, and gets delegated to actually do something about it. I said I didn't think you'd done anything yet, but I'd ask. Why haven't you?"

"I . . ." Miles shrugged. "There didn't seem to be any rush. I wasn't bounced out of ImpSec for having seizures, I was bounced out of ImpSec for falsifying a report. And not one on a minor matter, either. Even if the medicos could do something to get me back into guaranteed perfect working order tomorrow, which if they could my Dendarii surgeon would have already done it, it wouldn't . . . change anything." Illyan won't take me back. He can't. It's a matter of frigging principle, and Illyan is one of the most principled men I know.

"I'd wondered ... if it was because you didn't want to go to ImpMil," said Ivan. "Didn't want to deal with the military docs. If that's the case, I understand, I suppose—I think you're being silly, mind you, but I can understand. So I've looked up three different civilian clinics that specialize in cryo-revival cases, that seem to have good reputations. One's here in Vorbarr Sultana, one's over in Weienovya in Vordarians District, and one's on Komarr, if you think closer proximity to galactic medicine is an advantage that would offset any lingering animosity toward your name there. You want me to make you an appointment at one of them?"

Miles thought he could guess the names of all three, from his prior search. "No. Thanks."

Ivan sat back, his lips twisting in puzzlement. "You know ... I'd figured that would be the first thing you'd do, once the little ice-water bath brought you up out of the fog. You'd get your legs under yourself and be off and running, just like always. I never saw you face a wall that, if you couldn't go over it, you'd not try to find some way around, through, or under, or blow it up with sapper's charges. Or just bang your head against it till it fell down. And then they'd stick me with chasing you. Again."

"Running where, Ivan?"

Ivan grimaced. "Back to the Dendarii, of course."

"You know I can't do that. Without my official position in ImpSec, under due Imperial authority, my command of the Dendarii becomes a Vor lord, a Count's heir for God's sake, running a private army. Treason, Ivan, lethal treason. We've been all through that before. If I went, I could never come back. I gave my word to Gregor I wouldn't do it."

"Yeah?" said Ivan. "If you're not coming back, what does your word as Vorkosigan have to do with anything ever again?"

Miles sat silent. So. That business with having Ivan underfoot in Vorkosigan House hadn't been only a deathwatch after all. It had been an escape-watch as well.

"I'd have bet money you'd bolt," Ivan went on, "if there'd been anybody who had a high enough security classification to bet with. Besides Galeni, of course, and he's not the wagering sort. 'S why I've been dragging my feet despite Gregor and Mother about harassing you to get your head fixed. Why borrow trouble? It's a bet I'm glad to lose, by the way. So when are you going to get an appointment?"

"... Soon."

"Too vague," Ivan rejected this. "I want a straight answer. Something like, Today. Or maybe, Tomorrow before noon."

Ivan wouldn't go away till he extracted a response that satisfied him. "By . . . the end of the week," Miles managed.

"Good." Ivan nodded shortly. "I'll check back at the end of the week and expect to hear all about it. 'Bye—for now." He cut the com.

Miles sat staring at the empty vid plate. Ivan was right. He hadn't done a thing more about pursuing a cure since he'd been fired. Once freed from his constraining need for secrecy from ImpSec, why hadn't he been all over this seizure disorder, attacking it, tearing it apart, or at least riding some hapless medico as hard as he'd ever ridden the Dendarii Mercenaries to successfully complete their missions?

To buy time.

He knew it for the right answer, but it only brought him to a new level of self-bafflement. Time for what?

Keeping himself on self-inflicted medical leave allowed him to avoid facing certain unpleasant realities square-on. Such as the news that the seizures couldn't be cured, and that the death of hope was permanent and real; no cryo-revival for that corpse, just a warm and rotting burial.

Yeah? Really?

Or ... was he just as afraid his head could be fixed—and then he'd be logically compelled to grab the Dendarii and take off? Back to his real life, the one that soared out far, far away into the glittering galactic night, escaping all the dirtsuckers' petty little concerns. Back to heroing for a living.

More afraid.

Had he lost his nerve, after that hideous episode with the needle grenade? He had a clear flash-vision in his memory of his odd angled view of his own chest blowing outward in a lumpy red spray, and pain beyond measure, and despair beyond words. Waking up afterward hadn't been a picnic, either. That pain had dragged on for weeks, without escape. Suiting up again to go out with the squad after Vorberg had been hard, no question, but he'd been doing all right until the seizure.

So ... was the whole thing, from end to end, from seizure to falsification to discharge, a tricky dance to save himself from ever having to look down the wrong end of a needle-grenade launcher again, without having to say I quit out loud?

Hell, of course he was afraid. He'd have to be a frigging idiot not to be. Anyone would, but he'd done death. He knew how bad it was. Dying hurt, death was just nothing, both were to be avoided by any sane man. Yet he'd gone back. He'd gone back all the other times, too, after the little deaths, his legs smashed, his arms smashed, all the injuries that had left a map of fine white scars over his body from head to toe. Again and again and again. How many times did you have to die to prove you weren't a coward, how much pain were you required to consume to pass the course?

Ivan was right. He'd always found a way over the wall. He imagined it through, the whole scenario. Suppose he got his head fixed, here or on Komarr or on Escobar, it didn't matter where. And suppose he took off, and ImpSec declined to assassinate their renegade Vor, and they achieved some unspoken agreement to ignore each other forevermore. And he was all and only Naismith.

And then what?

I face fire. Climb that wall.

And then what?

I do it again.

And then what?

Again.

And then what?

It's logically impossible to prove a negative.

I'm tired of playing wall.

No. He needed neither to face nor avoid fire. If fire came his way, he'd deal with it. It wasn't cowardice, dammit, whatever it was.

So why haven't I tried to get my head fixed yet?

He rubbed his face and eyes, and sat up, and attempted once more to compose a coherent account of his new civilian status and how he'd come by it for the Admiral Count and his Lady, the woman whom his father routinely addressed as Dear Captain. It came out very stiff and flat, he was afraid, worse even than Marks birthday message, but he refused to put it off until yet another tomorrow. He recorded and sent it.

Albeit not by tight-beam. He let it go the long way, by ordinary mail, though marked Personal. At least it was gone, and he would not be able to call it back again.

Quinn had sent a birthday greeting too, demurely worded so as not to provide too much entertainment for the ImpSec censors. A strong tinge of anxiety leaked through her casual facade nonetheless. A second inquiry was more openly worried.

With enormous reluctance, he repeated a truncated version of his message for Quinn, minus the backfill and cutting straight to the results she had predicted. She deserved better, but it was the best he could do right now. She did not deserve silence and neglect. I'm sorry, Elli.

Ivan invited himself to dinner the next night. Miles feared he would have to endure more of the campaign to get him to address his medical problems, about which, admittedly, he had still done nothing, but instead Ivan brought flowers to Ma Kosti, and hung around the kitchen during dinner preparations, making her laugh, until she ran him out. At that point Miles began to fear it was the opening of a campaign to hire away his cook, though whether in Ivan's own right or on behalf of Lady Alys he was not yet sure.

They were halfway through dessert—by Ivan's request, a reprise of the spiced peach tart—when they were interrupted by a comconsole call, or rather, by Martin lurching in to announce, "There's some ImpSec stiff-rod on the com for you, Lord Vorkosigan."

Illyan? Why would Illyan call me? But when, Ivan following in curiosity, he'd trooped to the nearest com on that floor, the one sited in his grandfather's old sitting room overlooking the back garden, the face that formed over the vid plate at his touch was that of Duv Galeni.

"You smarmy goddamn little pimp," said Galeni, in a dead-level voice.

Miles's own bright, innocent, panicked, "Hi, Duv, what's up?" tripped over this and fell very flat, and just lay there, withering under Galeni's glare. Galeni's face was neither red nor pale, but livid, gray with rage. I should have stayed at Vorkosigan Surleau one more week, 1 think.

"You knew. You set this up. You set me up."

"Um . . . just checking." Miles swallowed. "What are we talking about?"

Galeni didn't even bother to dignify this with an answer, but glared on, his lips curling back on his long teeth in an expression that had nothing to do with a smile.

"Gregor and Laisa, by chance?" Miles hazarded. More thick silence, broken only by Galeni's breathing. "Duv ... I didn't know it would come out like this. Who would have guessed it, after all these years? I was trying to do you a favor, dammit!"

"The one good thing that's ever come my way. Taken. Stolen. Vor does mean thief. And you goddamn Barrayaran thieves stick together, all right. You and your fucking precious Emperor and the whole damned pack of you."

"Uh," put in Ivan from the side, "is this comconsole secured, Miles? Sorry, Duv, but if you're going to express yourself so, um, frankly, wouldn't it be better to do it in person? I mean, I hope this isn't over your ImpSec channel. They have ears in the damnedest places."

"ImpSec can take its ears and the flat head between them and shove them up its collective ass." Galeni's accent, normally elusively urbane, was going not only distinctly Komarran but street-Komarran.

Miles signaled Ivan to shut up. Remembering what had happened to two unlucky Cetagandans the last time Miles had seen Galeni this upset, a personal visit seemed like a singularly bad idea just now. There was Corporal Kosti to protect him, of course, but could Kosti handle one of his own superiors? In a homicidal trance? It seemed rather a lot to ask of the poor fellow.

"Duv, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to come out this way. It was nothing I'd planned. It took everyone by surprise, even Lady Alys. Ask Ivan."

Ivan shrugged, hands out. "'S true."

Miles cleared his throat, cautiously. "How, um . . . did you find out about this?"

"She called me."

"When?"

"About five minutes ago."

She's just dumped him. Oh great.

"They both called me," Galeni groaned. "She said I was her best friend here, and she wanted me to be the first Komarran to hear the news."

Gregor's really gone and done it, then. "And, uh . . . what did you say?"

"Congratulations, of course. What else could I say? With the pair of 'em sitting there grinning at me?" Miles breathed relief. Good. Galeni hadn't lost all control. He'd just called Miles to have a shoulder to gnash his teeth on. Looked at in a certain light, it was a measure of immense trust. Terrific. Thanks, Duv.

Ivan rubbed his neck. "You've been chasing this woman for five months, and all you got was that she thinks you're her friend? Duv, what the hell were you doing all that time?"

"She's a Toscane" said Galeni. "I'm just an impoverished collaborator, by her family's standards. I had to persuade her that I had a future worthy of her, nothing to look at now, no, but later . . . then he came along, and just, just swept her up with no trouble at all."

Miles, having watched Gregor practically turning handsprings in an effort to be pleasing to Laisa, said only, "Um."

"Five months is way too slow," said Ivan, continuing his tone of earnest critique. "God, Duv, I wish you'd asked me for some advice earlier."

"She's Komarran. What can one of you damned Barrayaran sugar-plum-fairy-soldier-bloody-buffoons know about a Komarran woman? Intelligent, educated, sophisticated—"

"Almost thirty ..." Miles mused.

"I had a timetable," said Galeni. "When she'd known me six months exactly, I was going to ask her."

Ivan winced.

Galeni seemed to be calming down, or at least beginning a downward slide from his immediate reaction of rage and pain into a less energy-intensive despair. Perhaps his violent words were going to be safety-vent enough for his boiling emotions, without violent actions this time. "Miles . . ."—at least he didn't preface the name with a string of pejoratives now—"you're nearly Gregor's foster brother."

No nearly about it. "Um?"

"Do you think . . . could you possibly persuade him to relinquish . . . no." Galeni ran down altogether.

No. "I owe Gregor . . . from too far back. On a personal as well as a political level. This heir business is essential to my future health and safety, and Gregor's been dragging his feet on it forever. Till now. I can't do anything but support him. And anyway"—he remembered his Aunt Alys's words—"it's Laisa's decision, not yours or mine or Gregor's. I can't help it if you forgot to tell her about your timetable. I'm sorry."

"Shit." Galeni cut the com.

"Well," said Ivan thinly into the silence that followed. "At least that's over with."

"Have you been avoiding him too?"

"Yes."

"Coward."

"Who was it spent the last two weeks hiding out in the mountains?"

"It was a strategic withdrawal."

"Well. I believe our dessert is drying out back in the dining room."

"I'm not hungry. Besides ... if this is Gregor and Laisa's night to start informing selected personal friends, prior to the official announcement ... I may as well stay here for a few more minutes."

"Ah." Ivan nodded, and pulled up a chair, and seated himself.

Three minutes later, the comconsole chimed. Miles keyed it on.

Gregor was trimly dressed in dark and distinctly civilian gear; Laisa was lovely as usual in bluntly Komarran style. Both were smiling, eyes alight with the glow of their mutual infatuation.

"Hello, Miles," Gregor began, to which Laisa added a, "Hello again, Lord Vorkosigan."

Miles cleared his throat. "Hi, folks. What can I do for you?"

"I wanted you to be among the first to know," said Gregor. "I've asked Laisa to marry me. And she said yes." Gregor was looking quite blitzed, as if this prompt assent had come as a surprise to him. Laisa's smile, to her credit, was at least equally blitzed.

"Congratulations," Miles managed.

Ivan leaned over his shoulder into the vid pickup to add a second to the motion, and Gregor said, "Oh, good, you're here. You were next." Going down his list of profoundly relieved heirs in official order of rank? Well ... it was the Barrayaran thing to do. Laisa murmured greetings to Ivan too.

"Am I the first to know?" Miles trolled.

"Not quite," said Gregor. "We've been taking turns. Lady Alys was first, of course; she's been in on this from the start, or nearly so."

"I sent the message to my parents yesterday. And I've told Captain Galeni," added Laisa. "I owe him so much. He and you both."

"And, ah, what did he say?"

"He agreed it might be good for planetary accord," said Gregor, "which, considering his background, I find most heartening."

In other words, you asked him point-blank, and he said, Yes, Sire. Poor, excellent Duv. No wonder he called me. It was that or explode. "Galeni ... is a complex man."

"Yes, I know you like him," said Gregor. "And I sent a message to your parents that should arrive tonight. I expect to hear back from them by tomorrow."

"Oh," Miles said, reminded. "Aunt Alys was ahead of you, I think. My father asked me to send on his personal assurance of support. And my mother asked me to tell you the same particularly, Dr. Toscane."

"I'm looking forward to meeting the legendary Cordelia Vorkosigan," Laisa said, with evident sincerity. "I think I could learn a lot from her."

"I think you could too," admitted Miles. "Good God. They'll be coming home for this, won't they."

"I can think of no one I want more to stand on my wedding circle than them, except you," said Gregor. "I trust you will be my Second?"

Just like a duel. "Certainly. Uh . . . what's the timetable on the public-circus part of this?"

Gregor sagged slightly. "Lady Alys seems to have some very definite ideas on that score. I wanted the betrothal ceremony immediately, but she's insisting it not even be announced till after her return from Komarr. I'm dispatching her to be my Voice to Laisa's parents, all the proper forms, you know. And the formal betrothal not for two months. And the wedding not for nearly a year! We compromised on one month after her return to the betrothal, and are still arguing about the other. She says if we don't give the Vor ladies time to dress properly, they'll never forgive me. I didn't see why it should take them two months to get dressed."

"Mm. I'd give her a free rein in this, if I were you. She could have the conservative Old Vor faction eating out of her hand for you without them ever knowing what hit them. Which is half your problem solved. I can't speak for the radical Komarran half, I'm afraid."

"Alys thinks we should have two weddings, one here, one on Komarr," said Gregor. "A double ordeal." He glanced aside, and squeezed Laisa's hand. "But worth it."

Staring down the social gauntlet opening with increasing complexity before them, they both looked like they were thinking of eloping. "You'll get through it all right," Miles assured them heartily. "We'll all help, won't we, Ivan?"

"My mother's already volunteered me," Ivan admitted glumly.

"Have you, ah, told Illyan?" Miles asked.

"I sent Lady Alys to break the news to him before anyone else," said Gregor. "He called on me in person to assure me of his personal and professional support—that phrase about support keeps cropping up. Do I look like I'm about to faint? I couldn't tell if he was pleased or horrified, but then, Illyan can be hard to read sometimes."

"Not that hard. I'd guess he was personally pleased, and professionally horrified."

"He did suggest I do all I could to expedite the return of your lady mother before the betrothal, to, as he put it, lend her clout to Lady Alys. I wondered if you'd add your voice to that plea for us, Miles. She's so hard to detach from your father."

"I'll try. Actually, it would probably take a wormhole blockade to keep her away."

Gregor grinned. "Congratulations to you too, Miles. Your father before you needed a whole army to do it, but you've changed Barrayaran history just with a dinner invitation."

Miles shrugged helplessly. God, is everybody going to blame me for this? And for everything that follows? "Let's try to avoid making history on this one, eh? I think we should push for unalleviated domestic dullness."

"With all my heart," Gregor agreed. With a cheery salute, he cut the com.

Miles laid his head down on the table, and moaned. "It's not my fault!"

"Yes, it is," said Ivan. "It was all your idea. I was there when you came up with it."

"No, it wasn't. It was yours. You're the one who dragooned me into attending the damned State dinner in the first place."

"I only invited you. You invited Galeni. And anyway, my mother dragooned me."

"Oh. So it's all her fault. Good. I can live with that."

Ivan shrugged agreement. "Well, should we drink to the happy couple? There are things in your cellars with more dust on them than an old Vor."

Miles thought it over. "Yeah. Let's go exploring."

Over the racks downstairs, just after violently rejecting Miles's diffident suggestion of maple mead as the after-dinner poison of choice, Ivan added reluctantly, "D'you think Galeni will try to do anything he'd regret? Or that we'd regret?"

Miles hesitated a long time before saying, "No."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Ivan did not make good his threat to follow up his harassment about Miles's medical treatment, or lack of it, because he was press-ganged into assisting Lady Alys's departure for Komarr. She paused in passing Vorkosigan House to drop off several kilos of historical references about previous Imperial weddings, with orders for Miles to study up. When she returned, she'd doubtless have a lengthy list of chores for everyone from Ivan outward. And the next man outward from Ivan was Miles.

Miles leafed through the old books in some dismay. How many of these dusty ceremonies were they going to drag out of the museum? It had been forty years since the last Imperial wedding, between Prince Serg of glorious/dubious memory and the ill-fated Princess Kareen. That had been a circus of monumental proportions, and Serg had only been the heir, not the reigning Emperor. Still, Miles supposed such a renewal of the forms of the Vor cemented their fraying identity as a class. Perhaps a well-conceived and conducted ceremony would act as a kind of social immuno-suppressant, to keep the Vor from rejecting the transplanted Komarran tissue. Alys certainly seemed to think so, and she ought to know; the Vorpatrils were as old-Vor as they came.

Glumly, he contemplated his future duties. He supposed being the Second to the Emperor at his wedding was politically as well as socially important, given the degree to which the two modes could run together in Vorbarr Sultana, but it still made him feel about as useful as a plaster lawn statue holding up a flambeau. Well . . . duty had brought him much stranger tasks before this. Would he rather be back cleaning freezing drains under Camp Permafrost? Or running around Jackson's Whole one step ahead of some psychotic local baron's goon squads?

Don't answer that, boy.

Lady Alys had found a temporary replacement for herself as Gregor's social chaperone in Drou Koudelka, the Commodore's wife and Delia's mother. Miles discovered this when Madame Koudelka called to issue an invitation/command for him to come be Vorishly ornamental at another of Gregor's courting picnics. Miles arrived a trifle early at the Residence's east portico only to run into a mob of men in parade red and blues just leaving some ultra-formal morning ceremony. He stood aside to let the uniformed officers pass, trying to keep the naked envy out of his face.

One man stepped down the stairs slowly and carefully, leaning on the railing. Miles recognized him instantly, and quelled an impulse to try to duck behind the nearest topiaried bush. Lieutenant Vorberg. Vorberg had never seen Admiral Naismith, only a sawed-off suit of combat armor. It had apparently been Gregor's day to hand out various Imperial recognitions, for a new decoration gleamed on Vorberg's chest, the one for being wounded in the Emperor's Service. Miles had half a jar full of similar ones at home in a drawer; at some point Illyan had stopped issuing them to him anymore, perhaps fearing that Miles's threat to don them all at once sometime was not facetious. But it was clearly the first serious honor Vorberg had ever had occasion to collect, for he wore it with a bemused self-consciousness.

Miles couldn't help himself. "Ah—Vorberg, is it?" he essayed, as the lieutenant passed him.

Vorberg blinked uncertainly at him, then his face cleared. "Vorkosigan, yes? I've seen you around Galactic Affairs HQ on Komarr, I believe." He nodded cordially, one ImpSec courier and fellow Vor to another.

"Where'd you collect the bad luck charm?" Miles nodded to Vorberg's chest. "Or should I not ask?"

"It's not that classified. I was on a routine—fairly routine—run out past Zoave Twilight. Bunch of goddamn hijackers captured the ship I was on."

"Not one of our courier ships! Surely I'd have heard about that. It would have been a major flap."

"I wish it had been. ImpSec might have sent a proper force after me for that. It was just a commercial freighter of Zoavan registry. So anyway, ImpSec in its infinite wisdom, and doubtless under the advice of the same budget-pinching accountants who booked me on that damned ship in the first place, scraped up some low-bidder mere outfit to try and spring me. It was a real foul-up." He lowered his voice confidentially. "If you're ever out that way yourself, avoid the collection of clowns calling itself the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. They're deadly."

"Isn't that the idea?"

"Not to your own side it's not."

"Oh." Someone must have told Vorberg he'd been hit by friendly fire. The surgeon, probably: she was incurably honest. "But I've heard of the Dendarii. I mean, obviously they have some renegade Barrayarans in their ranks, or they wouldn't have named themselves after my District's chief geographical feature. Unless they had some military history buff who was impressed by my grandfather's guerrilla campaigns."

"Their exec officer was some expatriate Barrayaran, yes. I met him. Their commander's rumored to be Betan. Apparently he escaped Betan therapy."

"I thought the Dendarii were supposed to be good."

"Not notably."

"You're here, aren't you?" said Miles, nettled. He controlled himself. "So . . . are you going back on duty?"

"I get to ride a desk or something at HQ for a couple of weeks, after this." Vorberg's vague nod indicated the ceremony just concluded. "Make-work. I don't see why my legs can't finish healing while I travel, but evidently the docs think I ought to be able to run away at full speed if required."

"That's the truth," Miles admitted ruefully. "If I had only moved a little faster myself ..." He cut off his words.

For the first time, Vorberg seemed to become aware of Miles's subdued civilian garb. "Are you on medical leave too?"

Miles's voice went curt. "I'm on medical discharge."

"Oh." Vorberg had the grace to look embarrassed. "But—I thought you had some kind of special dispensation from, um, above." Vorberg might be a little vague on who Miles was, but he knew exactly who Miles's father was.

"I exceeded it. Courtesy of a needle grenade."

"Ouch," said Vorberg. "That sounds even more unpleasant than plasma fire. I'm sorry to hear it. What do you plan to do, then?"

"I really don't know."

"Will you go back to your District?"

"No ... I have, um, social duties that will keep me in Vorbarr Sultana for a while." The general announcement of Gregor's betrothal had not yet been made; there would doubtless be a leak sometime, but Miles was determined it wouldn't be from him. ImpSec HQ was going to be a very busy place, once these nuptial preparations went into full swing. If Miles were still working there, now would be a wonderful time to seek some extended and very distant galactic mission. But he couldn't very well warn Vorberg of that. "Vorkosigan House is ... home enough."

"Perhaps I'll see you around. Good luck to you."

"You too." Miles gave him an analyst's salute, and passed on. Vorberg, of course, did not return the salute-like gesture to a civilian, but merely nodded politely.

Gregor's majordomo ushered Miles through to another garden party, minus the horse this time, and not so intimate. Gregor's close friend Count Henry Vorvolk and his Countess were present, and a couple of other of Gregor's cronies. The social agenda of the afternoon seemed to be to introduce the prospective bride to the next circle of Imperial acquaintances, outward from foster family such as Alys, Miles, and Ivan. Gregor arrived a little late, obviously having just changed from the parade uniform of this morning's award ceremony.

Drou Koudelka, Delia's mother, presided cheerfully in the absent Alys's place. Drou had formerly been Gregor's own bodyguard in his childhood, before she'd married Koudelka, and had also run security for Miles's mother. Miles could see that Gregor was anxious that Drou and Laisa hit it off well.

Gregor needn't have worried. Madame Koudelka, immensely experienced in the Vorbarr Sultana scene, got on well with everyone. As a close observer of the Vor while not one of them, she was very well placed to pass on private advice to Laisa, which seemed to be Gregor's idea.

Laisa did well too, as usual. She had the instincts of an ambassador, was observant, and never made the same mistake twice. Dropping her down in a Barrayaran city slum or the far backcountry and expecting her to survive might be optimistic, but it was clear she could handle Barrayar's galactic interface quite comfortably.

Despite the agenda, Gregor did manage to get his fiancee to himself for a while, when at his broad Imperial hint the group broke up for a postprandial stroll through the grounds. Miles ducked out with Delia Koudelka to sit on a bench overlooking the formal section of the gardens, and watch the minuet as the diligent strollers charitably tried to avoid Gregor and Laisa along the branching paths.

"How's your da?" Miles asked her, when they'd settled. "I should go see him, I suppose."

"Yes, he'd wondered why you seemed to be avoiding him this home leave. Then we heard about your medical discharge. He told me to tell you he was awfully sorry about that. Did you already know it was coming up that night we went to the State dinner? You never let on. But it couldn't have been a surprise to you."

"I was still desperately hoping I might skin out of it somehow." Not strictly true; he'd been in a state of complete denial, not thinking about it at all. Bad mistake, in retrospect.

"How's your Captain Galeni?"

"Despite everyone's assumption to the contrary, Duv Galeni is not my personal property."

She pursed her lips impatiently. "You know what I mean. How's he taking Laisa's engagement to Gregor? I was sure he was sweet on her, that night."

"Not real well," Miles admitted, "but he'll get over it. He was just courting too slowly, I guess. She must have decided he wasn't that interested."

"It would be a nice change from louts trying to crawl all over you," Delia sighed.

Miles pictured himself with pitons, and lots and lots of rope, attempting Mount Delia. A very dangerous face, that one. "And how are you getting on with Ivan these days? I didn't know if I ought to apologize for hijacking you from him, that night."

"Oh, Ivan."

Miles smiled faintly. "Are you looking forward to this Imperial wedding?"

"Well, Mother's all excited, at least for Gregor's sake. She's planning all our clothes already, and wondering if my sister Kareen can get back from Beta Colony for it. I wonder if she thinks weddings are contagious. We keep getting these little hints that Ma and Da would like the house back for themselves someday. Or at least the bathrooms."

"And you?"

"Well, there will be dancing." She brightened. "And maybe interesting men."

"Ivan's not an interesting man?"

"I said men, not boys."

"He's almost thirty. You're what, twenty-four?"

"It's not the years, it's the attitude. Boys just want to get laid. Men want to get married, and get on with their lives."

"I'm pretty sure men want to get laid too," Miles said rather apologetically.

"Well, yes, but it's not such an all-encompassing desire. They have some brain cells left over for other functions."

"You can't tell me women don't reciprocate."

"Maybe we're more selective."

"Your argument is not supported by the statistics. Almost everybody seems to get married. They can't be that selective."

She looked thoughtful, apparently struck by this. "Only in our culture. Kareen says on Beta Colony they do it differently."

"They do everything differently on Beta Colony."

"So maybe it is just contagious."

So how come I seem immune? "I'm surprised none of you girls have been snapped up yet."

"It's because there's four of us, I think," Delia confided. "Fellows get close to the herd, and then get all confused as to who's their target."

"I can see that," Miles allowed. En masse, the Koudelka blondes were a most unnerving phenomenon. "Looking to ditch your sisters, are you?"

"Any time," Delia sighed.

The Vorvolks strolled by, and stopped to chat; Miles and Delia ended up drifting back to Madame Koudelka in their wake, and the party broke up. Miles returned to Vorkosigan House, to scrounge around diligently for any task other than the homework the departing Lady Alys had dropped on him.

Miles was ensconced in the Yellow Parlor after dinner in a close review of Tsipis s monthly financial report, making notes and still ignoring the pile of leather-bound, dusty volumes in the corner, when Martin barged in.

"Somebody came to the door," Martin announced in a tone of mild amazement. As an apprentice butler, a chore he had picked up by default in addition to his duties as driver and occasional dishwasher, Martin had received instructions on the appropriate methods for ushering visitors inside, and guiding them through the labyrinth of the house to its living inhabitant. It was perhaps time for a short review of the principles involved.

Miles set down his reader-unit. "So . . . did you let him, her, or it in? Not a salesperson, I trust; the gate guard's usually good about keeping them out. ..."

Duv Galeni stepped in behind Martin. Miles swallowed his patter. Galeni was in uniform, still the undress greens of his day's office duties. He did not appear to be armed. In fact, he mostly looked just tired. And a little disturbed, but without that subtle manic edge that Miles had learned to red-flag. "Oh," Miles managed. "Come in. Have a seat."

Galeni's hand opened dryly, acknowledging the invitation despite the fact that he was in already. He settled stiffly into a straight chair.

"Would you . . . care for a drink?"

"No, thank you."

"Ah, that will be all, then, Martin. Thank you." After a beat, Martin took the hint, and decamped.

Miles had no idea where this was going, so merely raised his brows.

Galeni cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I believe I owe you an apology. I was out of line."

Miles relaxed. Perhaps it was going to be all right. "Yes, and yes. But it was understandable. Which is enough said."

Galeni nodded shortly, back to his normal cool mode.

"Um ... I hope I was your only confidant, that night."

"Yes. But that is only the preamble to what I came for. Something rather more difficult has come up."

Now what? Please, no more complicated love-lives . . . "Oh? What sort of something?"

"It's a professional dilemma, not a personal one this time."

I'm out of ImpSec, Miles carefully did not point out. He waited, curiosity aroused.

Galeni frowned more deeply. "Tell me . . . have you ever caught Simon Illyan in a mistake?"

"Well, he fired me" said Miles wryly.

Galeni's hand twitched, rejecting the joke. "No. I mean an error."

Miles hesitated. "He's not superhuman. I've seen him get led astray, down some incorrect line of reasoning, though not too often. He's pretty good about constantly rechecking his theories against new data."

"Not complex mistakes. Simple ones."

"Not really." Miles paused. "Have you?"

"Never before this. I haven't worked intimately with him, you understand. There's a weekly briefing with my department, and the occasional special request for information. But there have been four . . . odd incidents in the last three days."

"Incidents, eh? What sort?"

"The first one ... he asked me for a digest I was preparing. I finished it and sent it upstairs, then two hours later he called down and requested it again. There was a moment of confusion, then his secretary confirmed from the office log I had delivered it, and said he'd already handed it in to him. Illyan then found the code card on his desk, and apologized. And I didn't think anything more about it."

"He was . . . impatient," Miles suggested.

Galeni shrugged. "The second thing was so small, just a memo from his office with the wrong date. I called his secretary and had it corrected. No problem."

"Mm."

Galeni took a breath. "The third thing was a memo with the wrong date, addressed to my predecessor, who hasn't been there for five months, and asking for the latest report on a certain joint Komarran-Barrayaran trade fleet that had gone on a long circuit out past Tau Ceti. And which had returned to home orbit six months ago. When I called up to find out just what kind of information he wanted, he denied asking for any such thing. I shot the memo back to him, and he got real quiet, and cut the com. That was this morning."

"That's three."

"Then there was the weekly briefing this afternoon with my department, the five of us Komarran affairs analysts and General Allegre. You know Illyan's normal delivery style. Long pauses, but very incisive when he does speak. There were . . . more pauses. And what came out in between seemed to jump around, sometimes bewilderingly. He dismissed us early, before we were half done."

"Um . . . what was today's topic?"

Galeni's mouth shut.

"Yes, I understand, you really can't tell me, but if it was Gregor's upcoming matrimonial project—maybe he was editing out things for your benefit, on the fly or something."

"If he didn't trust me, he shouldn't have had me there at all," snapped Galeni. He added reluctantly, "It's a good theory. But it doesn't quite ... I wish you had been there."

Miles set his teeth against the obvious quips. "What are you suggesting?"

"I don't know. ImpSec spent quite a lot of money and time training me as an analyst. I look for changes in patterns. This is one. But I'm the new face in town, and a Komarran to boot. You've known Illyan all your life. Have you seen this before?"

"No," Miles admitted. "But those all sound like normal human errors."

"If they'd been more spread out, I doubt I'd have noticed. I don't need—or want—to know details, but is Illyan under any special strain in his personal life right now, that none of us in the office know about?"

Like you are, Duv? "I don't think Illyan has a personal life. Never married . . . lived in the same little apartment six blocks from work for fifteen years, till they tore the building down. He moved into one of the witness apartments on the lower level of HQ as a temporary stopgap two years ago, and still hasn't bothered to move out. I don't know about his early life, but there haven't been any women lately. Nor men, either. Nor sheep. Though I suppose I could see sheep. They can't talk, even under fast-penta. That's a joke," he added, as Galeni failed to smile. "Illyan's life is regular as a clock. He likes music . . . never dances . . . notices perfumes, and flowers with a lot of scent, and odors generally. It's a form of sensory input that isn't routed through his chip. I don't think it does somatic stuff either, no touch, just audio and visual."

"Yes. I was wondering about that chip. Do you know anything about that supposed chip-induced psychosis?"

"I don't think it can be the chip. I don't know that much about its tech specs, but all those folks were supposed to have gone wonky within a year or two of its installation. If Illyan was going to go nuts, he should have done it decades ago." Miles hesitated. "One does wonder about . . . stress? Ministrokes? He's sixty-plus . . . hell, maybe he's just tired. He's had that damned job for thirty years. I know he was planning to retire in five years." Miles decided not to explain how he knew that.

"I cannot imagine ImpSec without Illyan. The two are synonyms."

"I'm not sure he actually likes his job. He's just very good at it. He's had so much experience, he's almost impossible to surprise. Or panic."

"He has a very personal system for running the place," Galeni observed. "It's quite Vorish, really. Most non-Barrayaran organizations attempt to define their tasks so as to make the people who hold them interchangeable parts. It assures organizational continuity."

"And eliminates inspiration. Illyan's leadership style isn't very flashy, I admit, but he's flexible and infinitely reliable."

Galeni cocked an eyebrow. "Infinitely?"

"Usually reliable," Miles corrected quickly. For the first time, Miles wondered if Illyan was naturally drab. He'd always assumed it was a response to the high-security aspects of Illyan's job—a life with no handles for enemies to grab and twist. But maybe instead his colorless approach was how he dealt with whatever it was about the memory chip that had overwhelmed others?

Galeni placed his hands out flat across his knees. "I've told you what I've observed. Do you have any suggestions?"

Miles sighed. "Watch. Wait. What you've got here so far isn't even a theory. It's a handful of water."

"My theory is there's something very wrong with this handful of water."

"That's an intuition. Which is not an insult, by the way. I've learned a deep respect for intuition. But you mustn't confuse it with proof. I don't know what to say. If Illyan is developing some sort of subtle cognitive problems, it's up to his department heads to . . ." What? Mutiny? Go over Illyan's head? The only two people on the planet with that kind of elevation were Prime Minister Racozy and Emperor Gregor. "If this is something real, other people are going to notice it eventually. And it's better that it should be pointed out first by anyone else in ImpSec but you. Except me. That would be worse."

"What if they all feel that way?"

"I ..." Miles rubbed his forehead. "I'm glad you talked to me."

"Only because you were the one person I knew whose knowledge of Illyan had a really long baseline. Otherwise . . . I'm not sure I should be talking about it at all. Not outside of ImpSec."

"Nor inside of ImpSec either. Though there's Haroche. He's worked directly under Illyan for almost as long as I did."

"That may be why I found it difficult to approach him."

"Well . . . talk to me again, huh? If anything else disturbs you."

"Maybe it's all hot air," said Galeni, not very hopefully.

Miles could recognize denial at a hundred meters, these days. "Yeah. Urn . . . you want to change your mind about that drink?"

"Yeah," sighed Galeni.

Two mornings after this, Miles was deeply involved in an inventory of his closets' limited civilian contents, making a list of gaps and wondering if it would be simpler to just hire a valet and say "Take care of it," when his bedroom comconsole chimed. He ignored it for a minute, then clambered up off the floor next to the pile of discarded clothing and slouched to answer it.

Illyan's stern face appeared, and Miles's spine automatically straightened. "Yes, sir?"

"Where are you?" Illyan asked abruptly.

Miles stared. "Vorkosigan House. You just rang me here."

"I know that!" said Illyan irritably. "Why weren't you here, at 0900 as ordered?"

"Excuse me. What orders?"

"My orders. 'Be there at 0900 sharp and bring your notepad. You'll like this one. It's a breakout.' I thought you'd be early."

Miles recognized the style of an Illyanesque verbatim self-quote, all right. The content rang a very faint bell. It was an alarm bell. "What's this all about?"

"Something my Cetagandan analysts have cooked up, and spent a week pitching to me. It could be a very high-result, low-cost bit of tactical judo. There's a gentleman by the name of Colonel Tremont whom they think may be the best man to give the fading Marilacan resistance a shot in the arm. There's just one little hitch. He's presently a guest in the Cetagandan prison camp on Dagoola IV. The experience should have given him lots of motivation, if he can be freed. Anonymously, of course. I plan to give you considerable discretion as to the method, but those are the results I want: a new leader for Maniac, and no connection with Barrayar."

Miles didn't merely recognize the mission, he could swear those had been the exact words that Illyan had first used to describe it. At a highly secret morning conference at ImpSec HQ, long ago . . .

"Simon. The Dagoola mission was completed five years back. The Marilacans threw the last of the Cetagandans off their planet last year. You fired me over a month ago. I don't work for you anymore."

"Have you lost your mind?" Illyan demanded, and stopped abruptly. They stared at one another.

Illyan's face changed. Froze. "Excuse me," he muttered, and cut the com.

Miles just sat, staring at the empty vid plate. He'd never before felt his heart pound like this while sitting perfectly still in an empty room. Galeni's report had worried him.

Now he was terrified.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Miles sat unmoving for ten minutes. Galeni had been right. Hell, Galeni hadn't guessed the half of it. Illyan wasn't just forgetting things that were there, he was remembering things that weren't. Flashbacks?

Hey, if the man can't tell what year it is, I see a way you could get your old job back. . . .

It wasn't very funny.

What to do? Miles was surely the one person on Barrayar who dared not say a word in criticism of Illyan. It would be attributed instantly to a post-termination snit, or worse, attempted vengeance.

But he could not ignore the situation, not knowing what he knew now. Orders flowed from Illyan's office, and people obeyed them. Trustingly. Thirty years of accumulated trust was a bank it would take time to break. How much damage could Illyan do in the meantime? Now, of all times? Suppose Illyan flashed back to some of the messier moments of the Komarr Revolt?

And how long had this been going on, before Galeni noticed? It seemed sudden, but perhaps it was only suddenly visible. How many weeks—months—of orders were tainted with this unreliability? Somebody was going to have to go back over every message that had emanated from Illyan's office all the way back to—when? Someone. But not me.

And was the malfunction sited in the chip, or in Illyan's own neural tissue? Or was it some subtle synergistic dysfunction? That was a medical and bioengineering question, and it would take a technical expert to answer it. Again, not me.

In the end, he turned to exactly the solution, if you could call it that, which Galeni had fallen back on. Bounce the information to Someone Else, and hope they'll do something. So how long was it going to take the committee of concerned Illyan-observers to stop tossing the hot ball back and forth, and unite in effective action? It's not my decision. I wish to hell it were.

Reluctantly, he punched in a comconsole code. "This is Lord Vorkosigan. Connect me to the Office of Domestic Affairs, please," he told the ImpSec corporal who answered.

General Haroche wasn't in. "Have him call me as soon as you can reach him," Miles told the office clerk. "Its urgent."

He turned back to his piles of clothing while he waited. He scarcely knew which ones to pitch and which ones to put back. Haroche didn't call. Miles tried his office two more times before he finally ran the man down.

Haroche frowned impatiently at him from the comconsole imager. "Yes? What is it, Lord Vorkosigan?"

Miles took a deep breath. "Simon Illyan called me a short time ago. I think you should review the call."

"Excuse me?"

"Go up to Illyan s office, and get his secretary to replay the call for you. In fact, you should both see it. I know it was recorded; it's standard operating procedure."

"Why?"

Indeed. Why should Haroche take the word of a security pariah whom he had witnessed his respected superior Illyan not only discharge, but personally escort from his HQ? "General, it's really important, it's really urgent, and I really would rather you judged it for yourself."

"You're being theatrically mysterious, Lord Vorkosigan." Haroche frowned unamused disapproval.

"I'm sorry." Miles kept his voice flat and level. "You'll understand when you see it."

Haroche raised one eyebrow. "Oh? Maybe I will, then."

"Thank you." Miles cut the com. No use in asking Haroche to call back after viewing the vid; it would be out of Miles's hands for certain, then.

There. He'd done it, done the right thing, as nearly as possible under the circumstances.

He felt quite sick.

Now: should he call Gregor? It was unfair to let the Emperor be blindsided in this, but God . . .

Haroche would do so soon enough, Miles supposed. As soon as he caught up with events and put Illyan under proper medical care, Haroche would by default and the chain of command become acting Chief of ImpSec, and his immediate next duty would be to notify Gregor of this unpleasant turn of events, and determine the Emperor's will in the matter. It would all be over before the day was done.

Maybe the cause of Illyan's confusion was something simple, easily fixed; maybe he'd be back on duty within days. A short circuit in his chip, say. There's nothing simple about that chip. But ImpSec would take care of its own.

Miles sighed, and returned to his list of self-imposed little chores, barely attentive. He tried to read, but could not concentrate. It wasn't possible for Illyan to be covering his tracks in this, was it? Suppose Haroche had gone up to view that call, and it wasn't on the log anymore? But if Illyan had that degree of self-awareness, he ought to have turned himself in for medical treatment.

The day dragged on interminably. In the evening, when he broke and called both Gregor and Haroche, he could not reach either. Mutually tied up on this crisis, perhaps. He left messages requesting return calls, which did not come. He slept badly.

He hated being out of the information circuit. By the following evening Miles was ready to go in person to pound on ImpSec's back door and demand secret reports to which he had no entitlement whatsoever, when Galeni turned up at Vorkosigan House. He'd obviously come straight from work, still in uniform, and looked grim even by his own morose standards.

"Drink?" said Miles after one look at his face, when Martin ushered him into the Yellow Parlor, with a proper announcement this time. "Dinner?"

"Drink." Galeni flung himself into the nearest armchair, and leaned his head back, as if his neck ached right down to the base of his spine. "I'll think about dinner. I'm not hungry yet." He waited until Martin had departed to add, "It's over."

"Talk. What happened?"

"Illyan broke down completely in the middle of the all-departments briefing this afternoon."

"This afternoon? You mean General Haroche didn't turn him over to the ImpSec medical department yesterday?"

"What?"

Miles described his disturbing call from Illyan. "I notified Haroche immediately. Please don't tell me the man didn't do what I told him to."

"I don't know," said Galeni. "I can only report what I saw." As a trained analyst, not to mention historian, Galeni had a keen sense of the difference between eyewitness testimony, hearsay, and speculation. You always knew which category whatever he was recounting fell into.

"Illyan's under medical care now, isn't he?" Miles demanded in worry.

"Oh, God, yes," sighed Galeni. "The briefing started out almost normally. The department heads gave their weekly precis reports, and listed all the red flag items they want the other departments to watch out for. Illyan seemed nervous, more restless than usual, fiddling with objects on the table ... he snapped a data card in half, then muttered some apology. He stood up to give his usual list of chores for everyone, and it came out . . . one line never tracked another. He was all over the map. Not as if he thought it were the wrong day, but as if it were the wrong twenty days. Every sentence was grammatically correct and completely incoherent. And he didn't even seem to be aware of it, till he began looking at all of us staring at him with our jaws hanging open, and ran down.

"Then Haroche stood up—I swear it was the bravest thing I ever saw. And said, Sir, I believe you should present yourself for medical evaluation immediately. And Illyan barked back that he wasn't sick, and told Haroche to sit the hell down . . . except the look in his eyes kept flashing back and forth between rage and bewilderment. He was shaking. Where is that hulking teenager of yours with the drinks?"

"Probably took a wrong turn again, and is lost in the other wing. He'll sort himself out eventually. Please go on.

"Ah." Galeni rubbed his neck. "Illyan didn't want to go. Haroche called for a medic. Illyan countermanded him, said he couldn't leave in the middle of a crisis, except the crisis he seemed to think we were in the middle of was the Cetagandan invasion of Vervain, ten years ago. Haroche, who was about the color of milk by then, took him by the arm, and tried to steer him out—that was a mistake, because Illyan started to fight him. Haroche yelled, Oh, shit, get a medic and hurry! Which was bright of him. Damn, but Illyan fights dirty when he fights. I'd never seen that."

"Neither have I," said Miles, sickly fascinated.

"Two other men needed medics by the time the medic got there. They sedated Illyan to the eyeballs and tied him down in the ImpSec HQ clinic. And that was the end of that committee meeting. And to think I used to complain that they were boring."

"Ah, God." Miles pressed his hands to his eyes, and massaged his face. The scenario could hardly have been worse had it been deliberately engineered for maximum chaos and humiliation. And number of witnesses.

"Haroche is staying late at work tonight, needless to say," Galeni went on. "The whole buildings in a suppressed uproar. Haroche gave us all orders not to talk to anyone, of course."

"Except me?"

"He forgot to except you, for some reason," said Galeni dryly. "So you didn't get this from me. You didn't get this, period."

"Quite. I understand. I assume he's reported this to Gregor by now."

"One hopes."

"Dammit, Haroche should have had Illyan under medical care before quitting time last night!"

"He looked pretty scared. We all did. Arresting the Chief of Imperial Security in the middle of ImpSec HQ is ... not an easy task."

"No. No ... I shouldn't criticize the man who's in the line of fire, I suppose. He would have had to take enough time to make sure. It's not the sort of thing you dare make a mistake on, if you value your career. Which Haroche does." Taking Illyan down in such a public arena seemed needlessly cruel. At least Illyan fired me in private. But on the other hand it was absolutely clear, no ambiguity about it, no room for confusion or rumor or innuendo. Or argument.

"Bad timing for this," Miles went on. "Though I don't suppose there is such a thing as a good time to have a biocybernetic breakdown. I wonder ... if the strain of all these upcoming, um, Imperial demands was causal? It hardly seems possible. Illyan's weathered much worse crises than a wedding."

"A strain doesn't have to be the worst, to be the last," Galeni pointed out. "This thing could have been hanging by a thread since who knows when." Galeni hesitated. "I don't suppose this could have already been underway when he fired you? I mean . . . might you argue that his judgment was already impaired?"

Miles swallowed, not certain he was grateful to Galeni for saying out loud something he scarcely dared think. "I wish I could say so. But no. There was nothing wrong with his judgment then. It followed quite logically from his principles."

"So when did this start? It's a critical question."

"Yes. I've asked it of myself. Everyone else will be asking too, I'm sure. We'll all have to wait on the ImpSec physicians to tell us, I guess. Speaking of which, was there any word yet as to exactly what did cause this thing?"

"Nothing that trickled down to me. But they can hardly have started to examine the problem yet. I suppose they'll have to fly in obscure experts."

Martin appeared at last with their drinks, and Galeni elected to stay to dinner, a bit of news that made Martins face fall. Since Ma Kosti served the two men elegantly and abundantly on zero notice, Miles could only assume Martin had been forced to give up his portion to the guest, and been required to subsist on sandwiches. Having seen Ma Kosti's idea of a quick snack, Miles did not feel overly guilty about this, though her art tonight was somewhat wasted on his and Galeni's distraction.

Still . . . the worst was over, with Illyan, and the larger dangers averted. The rest would just be cleanup.

The pressed gargoyles on the lintel over the side door to ImpSec HQ were looking particularly suffused this morning, Miles thought, as if weighed down with sorrow and about to burst from the internal pressure of their sinister secrets. And the expressions on the faces of some of the men he passed bore a subtle resemblance to those of their granite mascots. The clerk at the security desk in the lobby looked up at him with a harried blink. "May I help you, sir?"

"I'm Lord Vorkosigan. I'm here to see Simon Illyan."

The clerk checked his comconsole. "You aren't on my roster, my lord."

"No. I just dropped by to visit him." The clerk, and everyone else, had to at least know that Illyan was off duty, if only because they had to have been informed that Haroche was now their acting chief. "In the clinic. Give me a tag and let me in, please."

"I can't do that, my lord."