“Ah?” she brightened slightly. “Hm. Miles, you see, has … had … has these only-child romantic notions about siblings. Now, I have a brother, so I have no such illusions.” She paused, glanced around the room, and leaned forward with a suddenly confidential air, lowering her voice. “You have an uncle, a grandmother, and two cousins on Beta Colony who are just as much your relatives as Aral and myself and your cousin Ivan here on Barrayar. Remember, you have more than one choice. I’ve given one son to Barrayar. And watched for twenty-eight years while Barrayar tried to destroy him. Maybe Barrayar has had its turn, eh?”

“Ivan’s not here now, is he?” Mark asked, diverted and horrified.

“He’s not staying at Vorkosigan House, no, if that’s what you mean. He is in Vorbarr Sultana, assigned to Imperial Service Headquarters. Perhaps,” her eye lit in speculation, “he could take you out and show you some of the things Miles wanted you to see.”

“Ivan may still be angry for what I did to him in London,” Mark jittered.

“He’ll get over it,” the Countess predicted confidently. “I have to admit, Miles would have positively enjoyed unsettling people with you.”

A quirk Miles inherited from his mother, clearly.

“I’ve lived almost three decades on Barrayar,” she mused. “We’ve come such a long way. And yet there is still so terribly far to go. Even Aral’s will grows weary. Maybe we can’t do it all in one generation. Time for the changing of the guard, in my opinion … ah, well.”

He sat back in his chair for the first time, letting it support him, starting to watch and listen instead of just cower. An ally. It seemed he had an ally, though he was still not sure just why. Galen had not spent much time on Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan, being totally obsessed with his old enemy the Butcher. Galen, it appeared, had seriously underestimated her. She had survived twenty-nine years here … might he? For the first time, it seemed something humanly possible.

A brief knock sounded on the hinged double doors to the hallway. At Countess Vorkosigan’s “Yes?”, they swung open partway, and a man poked his head around the frame and favored her with a strained smile.

“Is it all right for me to come in now, dear Captain?”

“Yes, I think so,” said Countess Vorkosigan.

He let himself through and closed the doors again. Mark’s throat closed; he swallowed and breathed, swallowed and breathed, with frighteningly fragile control. He would not pass out in front of this man. Or vomit. He hadn’t more than a teaspoon of bile left in his gut by now anyway. It was him, unmistakably him, Prime Minister Aral Count Aral Vorkosigan, formerly Regent of the Barrayaran Dire and de facto dictator of three worlds, conqueror of Komarr, military genius, political mastermind—accused murderer, torturer, hit man, too many impossible things to be contained in that stocky form now striding toward Mark.

Mark had studied vids of him taken at every age; perhaps it was somewhat odd that his first coherent thought was, He looks older than I expected. Count Vorkosigan was ten standard years older than his Betan wife, but he looked twenty or thirty years older. His hair was lighter shade of grey than in the vids from even two years ago. He was short for a Barrayaran, eye to eye with the Countess. His face was heavy, intense, weathered. He wore green uniform trousers but no jacket, just the cream shirt with the long sleeves rolled up and open at the round collar which, if it was an attempt at a casual look, failing utterly. The tension in the room had risen to choking levels at his entrance.

“Elena is settled,” Count Vorkosigan reported, seating himself beside the Countess. His posture was open, hands on knees, but he did not lean back comfortably. “The visit seems to be stirring up more memories than she was ready for. She’s rather disturbed.”

I’ll go talk to her in a bit,” promised the Countess.

“Good.” The Count’s eyes inventoried Mark. Puzzled? Repelled?

“Well.” The practiced diplomat whose job it was to talk three planets along the road to progress sat speechless, at a loss, as if unable to address Mark directly. He turned instead to his wife. “He passed as Miles?”

A tinge of dark amusement flashed in Countess Vorkosigan’s eyes.

He’s put on weight since then,” she said blandly.

“I see.”

The silence stretched for excruciating seconds.

Mark blurted out, “The first thing I was supposed to do when I saw you was try to kill you.”

“Yes. I know.” Count Vorkosigan settled back on the sofa, eyes on Mark’s face at last.

“They made me practice about twenty different back-up methods, could do them in my sleep, but the primary was to have been use a patch with a paralyzing toxin that left evidence on autopsy pointing to heart failure. I was to get alone with you, touch it to any part of your body I could reach. It was strangely slow, for an assassination drug.

I was to wait, in your sight, for twenty minutes while you died, and never let on that I was not Miles.”

The Count smiled grimly. “I see. A good revenge. Very artistic. It would have worked.”

“As the new Count Vorkosigan, I was then to go on and spearhead a drive for the Imperium.”

“That would have failed. Ser Galen expected it to. It was merely the chaos of its failure, during which Komarr was supposed to rise, that he desired. You were to be another Vorkosigan sacrifice then.” He actually seemed to grow more at ease, professional, discussing these grotesque plots.

“Killing you was the entire reason for my existence. Two years ago I was all primed to do it. I endured all those years of Galen for no other purpose.”

“Take heart,” advised the Countess. “Most people exist for no reason at all.”

The Count remarked, “ImpSec assembled a huge pile of documentation on you, after the plot came to light. It covers the time from when you were a mere mad gleam in Galen’s eye, to the latest addition about your disappearance from Earth two months ago. But there’s nothing in the documentation that suggests your, er, late adventure on Jackson’s Whole was some sort of latent programming along the lines of my projected assassination. Was it?” A faint doubt colored his voice.

“No,” said Mark firmly. “I’ve been programmed enough to know. It’s not something you can fail to notice. Not the way Galen did it, anyway.”

“I disagree,” said Countess Vorkosigan unexpectedly. “You were set up for it, Mark. But not by Galen.”

The Count raised his brows in startled inquiry.

“By Miles, I’m afraid,” she explained. “Quite inadvertently.”

“I don’t see it,” said the Count.

Mark felt the same way. “I was only in contact with Miles for a few days, on Earth.”

“I’m not sure you’re ready for this, but here goes. You had exactly three role models to learn how to be a human being from. The Jacksonian body-slavers, the Komarran terrorists—and Miles. You were steeped in Miles. And I’m sorry, but Miles thinks he’s a knight-errant. A rational government wouldn’t allow him possession of a pocket-knife, let alone a space fleet. And so, Mark, when you were finally forced to choose between two palpable evils and a lunatic—you upped and ran after the lunatic.”

“I think Miles does very well,” objected the Count.

“Agh.” The Countess buried her face in her hands, briefly. “Love, we are discussing a young man upon whom Barrayar laid so much unbearable stress, so much pain, he created an entire other personality escape into. He then persuaded several thousand galactic mercenararies to support his psychosis, and on top of that conned the Barrayaran Imperium into paying for it all. Admiral Naismith is one hell of a lot more than just an ImpSec cover identity, and you know it. I grant you he’s a genius, but don’t you dare try to tell me he’s sane.” She paused. “No. That’s not fair. Miles’s safety valve works. I won’t really begin to fear for his sanity till he’s cut off from the little admiral. It’s extraordinary balancing act, all in all.” She glanced at Mark. “And a nearly impossible act to follow, I should think.”