Miles’s comconsole was the secured type, in no way junior to the one in the Count’s library. Mark walked over and examined it only by eye; his hands he shoved back deep into his trouser pockets. His fingertips encountered Kareen Koudelka’s crumpled flowerlets.

He drew them out, and spread them on his palm. In a spasm of frustration, he smashed the blooms with his other hand, and threw them to the floor. Less than a minute later he was on his hands and knees frantically scraping the scattered bits up off the carpet again. I think I must be insane. He sat on his knees on the floor and began to cry.

Unlike poor Ivan, no one interrupted his misery, for which he was profoundly grateful. He sent a mental apology after his Vorpatril cousin, Sorry, sorry … though odds were even whether Ivan would remember anything about his intrusion come the morning. He gulped for control of his breath, his head aching fiercely.

Ten minutes delay downside at Bharaputra’s had been all the difference. If they’d been ten minutes faster, the Dendarii would have made it back to their drop shuttle before the Bharaputrans had a chance to blow it up, and all would have unfolded into another future. Thousands of ten-minute intervals had passed in his life, unmarked and without effect. But that ten minutes had been all it took to transform him from would-be hero to permanent scum. And he could never recover the moment.

Was that, then, the commander’s gift: to recognize those critical minutes, out of the mass of like moments, even in the chaos of their midst? To risk all to grab the golden ones? Miles had possessed that gift of timing to an extraordinary degree. Men and women followed him, laid all their trust at his feet, just for that.

Except once, Miles’s timing had failed… .

No. He’d been screaming his lungs out for them to keep moving. Miles’s timing had been shrewd. His feet had been fatally slowed by others’ delays.

Mark climbed up off the floor, washed his face in the bathroom, and returned and sat in the comconsole’s station chair. The first layer of secured functions was entered by a palm-lock. The machine did not quite like his palm-print; bone growth and subcutaneous fat deposits were beginning to distort the pattern out of the range of recognition. But not wholly, not yet; on the fourth try it took a reading that pleased it, and opened files to him. The next layer of functions required codes and accesses he did not know, but the top layer had all he needed for now: a private, if not secured, comm channel to ImpSec.

ImpSec’s machine bounced him to a human receptionist almost immediately. “My name is Lord Mark Vorkosigan,” he told the corporal on night-duty, whose face appeared above the vid plate. “I want to speak with Simon Illyan. I suppose he’s still at the Imperial Residence.”

“Is this an emergency, my lord?” the corporal asked.

“It is to me,” growled Mark.

Whatever the corporal thought of that, he patched Mark on through. Mark insisted his way past two more layers of subordinates before the ImpSec chief’s tired face materialized.

Mark swallowed. “Captain Illyan.”

“Yes, Lord Mark, what is it?” Illyan said wearily. It had been a long night for ImpSec, too.

“I had an interesting conversation with a certain Captain Vorventa, earlier this evening.”

“I am aware. You offered him some not-too-oblique threats.”

And Mark had assumed that ImpSec guard/servant had been sent to protect him … ah, well.

“So I have a question for you, sir. Is Captain Vorventa on the list of people who are supposed to know about Miles?”

Illyan’s eyes narrowed. “No.”

“Well, he does.”

“That’s … very interesting.”

“Is that helpful for you to know?”

Illyan sighed. “It gives me a new problem to worry about. Where is the internal leak? Now I’ll have to find out.”

“But—better to know than not.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Can I ask a favor in return?”

“Maybe.” Illyan looked extremely non-committal. “What kind of favor?”

“I want in.”

“What?”

“I want in. On ImpSec’s search for Miles. I want to start by reviewing your reports, I suppose. After that, I don’t know. But I can’t stand being kept alone in the dark any more.”

Illyan regarded him suspiciously. “No,” he said at last. “I’m not turning you loose to romp through my top-secret files, thank you. Good night, Lord Mark.”

“Wait, sir! You complained you were understaffed. You can’t turn down a volunteer.”

“What do you imagine you can do that ImpSec hasn’t?” Illyan snapped.

“The point is, sir—ImpSec hasn’t. You haven’t found Miles. I can hardly do less.”

He hadn’t put that quite as diplomatically as he should have, Mark realized, as Illyan’s face darkened with anger. “Good night, Lord Mark,” Illyan repeated through his teeth, and cut the link with a swipe of his hand.

Mark sat frozen in Miles’s station chair. The house was so quiet the loudest sound he could hear was his own blood in his ears. He should have pointed out to Illyan how clever he’d been, how quick on the uptake; Vorventa had revealed what he knew, but in no way had Mark cross-revealed that he knew Vorventa knew. Illyan’s investigation must now take the leak, whatever it was, by surprise. Isn’t that worth something? I’m not as stupid as you think I am.

You’re not as smart as I thought you were, either, Illyan. You are not … perfect. That was disturbing. He had expected ImpSec to be perfect, somehow; it had anchored his world to think so. And Miles, perfect. And the Count and Countess. All perfect, all unkillable. All made out of rubber. The only real pain, his own.

He thought of Ivan, crying in the shadows. Of the Count, dying in the woods. The Countess had kept her mask up better than any of them. She had to. She had more to hide. Miles himself, the man who had created a whole other personality just to escape into… .

The trouble, Mark decided, was that he had been trying to be Miles Vorkosigan all by himself. Even Miles didn’t do Miles that way. He had co-opted an entire supporting cast. A cast of thousands. No wonder I can never catch up with him.

Slowly, curiously, Mark opened his tunic and removed Gregor’s comm card from his inner breast pocket, and set it on the comconsole desk. He stared hard at the anonymous plastic chip, as if it bore some coded message for his eyes only. He rather fancied it did.

You knew. You knew, didn’t you, Gregor you bastard. You’ve just been waiting for me to figure it out for myself.

With spasmodic decision, Mark jammed the card into the comconsole’s read-slot.

No machines this time. A man in ordinary civilian clothing answered immediately, though without identifying himself. “Yes?”

“I’m Lord Mark Vorkosigan. I should be on your list. I want to talk to Gregor.”

“Right now, my lord?” said the man mildly. His hand danced over a keypad array to one side.

“Yes. Now. Please.”

“You are cleared.” He vanished.

The vid plate remained dark, but the audio transmitted a melodious chime. It chimed for quite a long time. Mark began to panic. What if—but then it stopped. There was a mysterious clanking sound, and Gregor’s voice said, “Yes?” in a bleary tone. No visuals.

“It’s me. Mark Vorkosigan. Lord Mark.”

“Yeah?”

“You told me to call you.”

“Yes, but it’s …” a short pause, “five in the bleeding morning, Mark!”

“Oh. Were you asleep?” he carolled frantically. He leaned forward and heat his head gently on the hard cool plastic of the desk. Timing. My timing.

“God, you sound just like Miles when you say that,” muttered the Emperor. The vid plate activated; Gregor’s image came up as he turned on a light. He was in some sort of bedroom, dim in the hack-ground, and was wearing nothing but loose black silky pajama pants. He peered at Mark, as if making sure he wasn’t talking to a ghost. But the corpus was too corpulant to be anyone but Mark. The Emperor heaved an oxygenating sigh and blinked himself to focus. “What do you need?”