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

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

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

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

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

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

  CHAPTER FOUR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Can't, today. He's not in."

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

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

  "Will he be back soon? I can wait."

  "Not today. He's out of town."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Of course." The secretary made a note.

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

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

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

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

  "Just barely," put in the secretary.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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