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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I look forward to it."

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

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

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

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

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

"Behave," Gregor murmured. Miles grinned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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