"He's lighter than I thought," said Galeni.

"Yeah, but you should see Mark, now," said Ivan.

The two men carried him down the narrow servant's stairs between the fourth floor and the third. Maybe they were going to put him to bed. That would save him a bit of trouble. Maybe he would go to sleep there. Maybe, if he were very lucky, he wouldn't wake up again until the next century, when there would be nothing left of his name and his world but a distorted legend in men's minds.

But they continued on past Miles's bedroom door, and bumped him through into an old bathroom down the hall, one that had never been remodeled. It contained an antique iron tub large enough for small boys to swim in, at least a century old.

They plan to drown me. Even better. I shall let them.

"One two three, on three?" said Ivan to Galeni.

"Just three," said Galeni.

"All right."

They swung him over the edge; for the first time, Miles glimpsed what waited for him below. His body tried to spasm, but his unused locked muscles foiled him, and his dry throat blocked his cry of outrage.

About a hundred liters of water. With about fifty kilos of ice cubes floating in it.

He plunged downward into the crashing cold. Ivan's long arms thrust him under all the way.

He came up yelling "Ice wat—" Ivan shoved him back in again.

On his next breath, "Ivan, you goddamn fri—"

On the third emergence his voice found expression in a wordless howl.

"Ah, ha!" Ivan chortled happily. "I thought that would get a rise out of you!" He added aside to Galeni, who had ducked away out of range of the wild splashing, "Ever since that time he spent at Camp Permafrost as a weather officer, there's nothing he hates worse than cold. Back you go, boy."

Miles fought his way out of Ivan's grip, spat freezing water, clambered up, and fell out over the side of the tub. Ice cubes stuck here and there to the outside of his sodden uniform tunic, and slithered down his neck. His hand drew back in a fist, and shot upward at his cousin's grinning face.

It connected with Ivan's chin with a satisfying meaty thunk; the pain was delicious. It was the first time in his life he'd ever successfully slugged Ivan.

"Hey!" Ivan yelped, ducking backwards. Miles's second swing missed, as Ivan now prudently held him at arm's length, out of Miles's range. "I thought that sort of thing broke your arm!"

"Not anymore," Miles panted. He stopped swinging, and stood shivering.

Ivan rubbed his jaw, brows rising. "Feeling better now?" he asked after a moment.

Miles answered with a spate of swearing, plucking off and throwing a few last clinging ice cubes from his tunic at Ivan's head along with the curses.

"Glad to hear it," said Ivan genially. "Now I'm going to tell you what you're going to do, and you're going to do it. First thing is, you're going to go to your room and take off that wet uniform. Then depilate that repellent beard stubble and get a hot shower. And then you're going to get dressed. And then we're going to take you out to dinner."

"Don't want to go out," Miles mumbled, surly.

"Did I ask for an argument? Did you hear me ask for a Betan vote, Duv?"

Galeni, watching in fascination, shook his head.

"Right," Ivan continued. "I don't want to hear it, and you don't have a choice. I've got another fifty kilos of ice tucked in the freezer downstairs, and you know I won't hesitate to use it."

Miles could read the utter, indeed, enthusiastic sincerity of this threat in Ivan's face. His bad words trailed off into a disagreeable, but not disagreeing, hiss. "You enjoyed that," he grumbled at last.

"Damn straight," said Ivan. "Now go get dressed."

Ivan made few further demands upon Miles until he had dragged him out to a nearby restaurant. There he made sotto voce threats until Miles put a few bites of food into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. Once he started eating, he found he was very hungry, and Ivan desisted, satisfied with his performance.

"Now," said Ivan, shoveling in the last bite of his own dessert. "What the hell is going on with you?"

Miles glanced up at the two captains, at Galeni's eye-of-Horus pins. "You first. Did Illyan send you both?"

"He asked me to check on you," said Galeni, "having got the idea that we were friends of a sort. Since the gate guard reported you had gone in, but never come out, and you didn't answer your comconsole after repeated calls and messages, I thought I'd better take a look in person. I felt . . . less than comfortable invading Vorkosigan House by myself, so I rounded up Ivan, whom I construed as having a family right to be there. On the authorization I had from Illyan, the gate guard overrode your locks and let us in, so we didn't have to break a window." Galeni hesitated. "I also didn't fancy having to pull your body down from a rafter somewhere all by myself."

"Told you not," said Ivan. "Not his style. If he ever does do himself in, I'm betting it'll be something that involves large explosions. And lots of innocent bystanders, probably."

Miles and Ivan exchanged sneers.

"I … wasn't so sure," said Galeni. "You didn't see him, Ivan, when he came out of Illyan's office. The last time I saw anybody who looked that shocky was a fellow I helped pull out of his crashed lightflyer."

"I'll explain it," Miles sighed, "but not here. Some more private place. Too much of it has to do with business." He glanced away from Galeni's silver eyes. "My former business."

"Right," agreed Galeni blandly.

They ended up back in the kitchen at Vorkosigan House. Miles hoped dimly Ivan would help him get drunk, but his cousin brewed tea, instead, and made him drink two cups for rehydration, before settling down astride a chair, his arms crossed on the back, and saying, "All right. Give. You know you have to."

"Yes. I know." Miles closed his eyes briefly, wondering where to begin. The beginning would probably do. Excuses and denials, all so well practiced, boiled up in his head. The taste of them, balanced on his tongue, was more loathsome than clean confession, and more lingering. The shortest way between two points was a straight line. "After my cryo-revival last year … I had a problem. I started getting these seizures. Convulsions, lasting two to five minutes. They seemed to be triggered by moments of extreme stress. My surgeon stated that, like the memory loss, they might right themselves. They were rare, and seemed to be tailing off as promised. So I … didn't mention it to my ImpSec doctors, when I came home."

"Oh, shit," murmured Ivan. "I see where this is going. Did you tell anyone?"

"Mark knew."

"You told Mark, but not me?"

"I could trust Mark … to do what I asked of him. I could only trust you to do what you thought was right." He'd said almost the same thing to Quinn, hadn't he.

God.

Ivan's lips twitched, but he did not deny it.

"You can see why I was afraid it might be a one-way ticket to a medical discharge, at worst. A desk job at best, and no more Dendarii Mercenaries, no more field work. But I thought if I, or rather my Dendarii surgeon, could fix it quietly, Illyan need never be the wiser. She gave me some medication. I thought it was working." No. No excuses, dammit.

"And Illyan caught up with you and canned you for it? Isn't that a little extreme, after all you've done for him?"

"There's more."

"Ah."

"My last mission … we went to pry a kidnapped ImpSec courier out of the hands of some hijackers out past Zoave Twilight. I wanted to supervise the rescue personally. I was wearing my combat armor. I … had an episode right in the middle of the operation. My suit's plasma arc locked on. I damn near cut the poor courier in half, but he was lucky. I just lopped off his legs, instead."