Miles stared into the shadows. With all the artificial lighting about, his eyes were not dark-adapting as well as he'd like,

Ivan stared too. "I can't spot any coppers in the bushes," he muttered.

"I'm not looking for police," Miles whispered back.

"What, then?"

"Mark said a man wearing face paint fired at him. Have you seen anybody wearing face paint yet?"

"Ah . . . maybe the police nabbed him first, before we saw the others." But Ivan looked over his shoulder.

"Maybe. Mark—what color was the face? What pattern?"

"Mostly blue. With white and yellow and black kind of swirling slashes. A ghem-lord of middle rank, right?"

"A century-captain. If you were supposed to be me you should be able to read ghem-markings forward and backward."

"There was so much to learn. …"

"Anyway, Ivan—do you really want to just assume a century-captain, highly trained, sent from headquarters, formally sworn to his hunt, really let some London constable sneak up and stun him? The others were just ordinary soldiers. The Cetagandans will bail 'em out later. A ghem-lord'd die before he'd let himself be so embarrassed. He'll be a persistent bugger, too."

Ivan rolled his eyes. "Wonderful."

They wound through a couple hundred meters of trees, shrubbery and shadows. The hiss and hum of traffic on the main coastal highway came faintly now. The pedestrian underpasses were doubtless guarded. The high-speed highway was fenced and strictly forbidden to foot traffic.

A synthacrete kiosk cloaked with bushes and vines hopeful of concealing its blunt utility squatted near the main path to the pedestrian underpass. At first Miles took it for a public latrine, but a closer look revealed only one blank locked door. The spotlights that should have illuminated that side were knocked out. As Miles watched, the door began to slide slowly aside. A weapon in a pale hand glittered faintly in the blackness. Mile aimed his stunner and held his breath. The dark shape of a man slipped out.

Miles exhaled. "Captain Galeni!' he hissed. Galeni jerked as though shot, crouched, and scurried toward them, joining them in their concealment on hands and knees. He swore under his breath, discovering, as Miles had, that this grouping of ornamental shrubs had thorns. His eyes took instant inventory of the ragged little group, Miles and Mark, Ivan and Elli. "I'll be damned. You're still alive."

"I'd sort of been wondering about you, too," Miles admitted.

Galeni looked—Galeni looked bizarre, Miles decided. Gone was the blank witnessing stillness that had absorbed Ser Galen's death without comment. He was almost grinning, electric with a slightly off-center exhilaration, as if he'd overdone some stimulant drug. He was breathing heavily; his face was bruised, mouth bloody. His swollen hand flexed on his weapon—last seen weaponless, he was now carrying a Cetagandan military-issue plasma arc. A knife hilt stuck out of his boot top.

"Have you, ah, run into a guy wearing blue face paint yet?" Miles inquired.

"Oh yes," said Galeni in a tone of some satisfaction.

"What the hell happened to you? Sir."

Galeni spoke in a rapid whisper. "I couldn't find an entrance in the Barrier near where I'd left you. I spotted that utilities access over there," he jerked his head toward the kiosk, "and thought there might be some power optic or water line tunnels back to the Barrier. I was half-right. There are utility tunnels all under this park. But I got turned around underground, and instead of coming out in the Barrier, I ended up coming out a port in the pedestrian crossing under the Channel Highway. Where I found guess who?"

Miles shook his head. "Police? Cetagandans? Barrayarans?"

"Close. It was my old friend and opposite number from the Cetagandan Embassy, Ghem-lieutenant Tabor. It actually took me a couple of minutes to realize what he was doing there. Playing outer-perimeter backup to the experts from HQ. Same as I would have been doing if I hadn't been," Galeni snickered, "confined to quarters.

"He was not happy to see me," Galeni went on. "He couldn't figure what the hell I was doing there either. We both pretended to be out viewing the moon, while I got a look at the equipment he had packed in his groundcar. He may have actually believed me; I think he thought I was drunk or drugged."

Miles politely refrained from remarking, I can see why.

"But then he started getting signals from his team, and had to get rid of me in a hurry. He pulled a stunner on me—I ducked—he didn't hit me square on, but I lay low pretending to be more disabled than I was, listening to his half of the conversation with the squad in the tower and hoping for a chance to reverse the situation.

"The feeling was just coming back to the left half of my body when your blue friend showed up. His arrival distracted Tabor, and I jumped them both."

Miles's brows rose. "How the devil did you manage that?"

Galeni's hands were flexing as he spoke. "I don't . . . quite know," he admitted. "I remember hitting them. …" He glanced at Mark. "It was nice to have a clearly defined enemy for a change."

Upon whom, Miles guessed, Galeni had just unloaded all the accumulated tensions of the last impossible week and this mad night. Miles had witnessed berserkers before. "Are they still alive?"

"Oh yes."

Miles decided he would believe that when he'd had a chance to check for himself. Galeni's smile was alarming, all those long teeth gleaming in the darkness.

"Their car," said Ivan urgently.

"Their car," agreed Miles. "Is it still there? Can we get to it?"

"Maybe," said Galeni. "There is at least one police squad in the tunnels now. I could hear them."

"We'll have to chance it."

"Easy for you to say," muttered Mark truculently. "You have diplomatic immunity."

Miles stared at him, seized by berserker inspiration. His finger traced over an inner pocket in his grey jacket. "Mark," he breathed, "how would you like to earn that hundred-thousand Betan dollar credit chit?"

"There isn't any credit chit."

"That's what Ser Galen said. You might reflect on what else he was wrong about tonight." Miles glanced up to check what effect mention of his father's name had on Galeni. A cooling one, apparently; some of the drawn and inward look returned to his eyes even as Miles watched. "Captain Galeni. Are those two Cetagandans conscious, or can they be brought to consciousness?"

"At least one is. They may both be by now. Why?"

"Witnesses. Two witnesses, ideal."

"I thought the whole point of sneaking off instead of surrendering was to avoid witnesses?" said Ivan plaintively.

"I think," Miles overrode him, "I had better be Admiral Naismith. No offense, Mark, but you don't have your Betan accent quite right. You don't hit your terminal H's quite hard enough or something. Besides, you've practiced Lord Vorkosigan more."

Galeni's eyebrows were going up, as he grasped the idea. He nodded thoughtfully, though his face as he turned his gaze on Mark was unreadable enough to make Mark flinch. "Indeed. You owe us your cooperation, I think." He added even more softly, "You owe me."

This was not the moment to point out how much Galeni owed Mark in return, though a brief meeting of their eyes convinced Miles that Galeni, at least, was perfectly conscious of the two-way flow of that grim debt. But Galeni would not fumble this opportunity.

Sure of his alliance, Admiral Naismith said, "Into the tunnel, then. Lead on, Captain."

The Cetagandan groundcar was parked in a shadowy spot under a tree, a few meters to their left as they rose up out of the lift tube from the pedestrian subway to the Barrier park. Still no police guard on this end; the end toward the park, Galeni had informed them, had a two-man squad, though they had not risked themselves rechecking that fact. The scurry through the tunnels had been hectic enough, barely dodging a police bomb squad.