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.'

Ivan's jaw dropped, then closed. 'I … see.'

'No, you don't. Not yet. That was merely criminally stupid. What I did next was fatal. I falsified my mission report. Claimed the accident with Vorberg was an equipment malfunction.'

Galeni's breath drew in sharply. 'Illyan said . . . you'd resigned by request. But he didn't say whose request or why, and I didn't dare ask. I didn't believe it. I thought it might be the start of some new scam, an internal investigation or something. Except I don't think even you could have faked the look on your face.'

Ivan was still processing it. 'You lied to Illyan?'

'Yeah. And then I documented my lie. Anything worth doing is worth doing well, yes? I didn't resign, Ivan. I was fired. On all of Barrayar right now, there is no one more fired than I am.'

'Did he really rip off your silver eyes?' Ivan's own eyes were round.

'Who said that?'

Galeni grunted. 'Looked like it. Haroche thought so.'

Worse. He was crying, Ivan. In all his life, Miles had never seen Illyan weep. 'No. I did that myself. I did it all to myself.' He hesitated. 'I had my last seizure in his office. Right in front of him. I think I mentioned they seem to be triggered by stress.'

Ivan's face screwed up in a sympathetic wince.

Galeni blew out his breath. 'Haroche couldn't believe it either. He said everyone at ImpSec HQ knew Illyan thought you shit gold bars.'

Naismith was the best, oh yes. 'After the Dagoola IV operation, he damn well should have thought so.' But the Dagoola rescue had been almost four years ago. So what have you shit for me lately? 'I take it that's a direct quote from Haroche.'

'Mm, he can be blunt. He doesn't exactly suffer fools gladly. I'm told he came up through the ranks. He said you were being groomed as Illyan's successor.'

Miles's brows rose in startlement. 'Impossible. Being a desk driver requires very different qualities than being a field agent. A diametrically opposed attitude to the rules, for starters. I'm not . . . wasn't nearly ready for Illyan's job.'

'So Haroche said. Your next posting was to be his assistant, it seems. Five years on the domestic side, and you'd have been ready to step up when Illyan was ready to retire.'

'Rubbish. Not Domestic Affairs. Now, if I had to fly a desk, Galactic Affairs on Komarr would actually make sense. I have some experience there.'

'That gap in your experience was exactly what they hoped to target by harnessing you with Haroche. Illyan once told me Haroche was personally responsible while he was a Domestic Affairs agent for derailing no less than four serious plots against the Emperors life. Not including the Yarrow incident, which won him his chiefship. Maybe Illyan hoped whatever Haroche has would rub off on you.'

'I don't need—' Miles began, and shut his mouth.

'What's the Yarrow incident,' asked Ivan, 'and if it's that important, why haven't I heard of it?'

'A textbook case in counterterrorism,' said Galeni. 'Illyan has all his new analysts study it.'

'The case is famous inside ImpSec,' Miles explained. 'Being a success, however, it's practically unknown outside ImpSec. It's the nature of the job. Successes are secret and thankless, failures are splashy and gain you only blame.' Take my career, for example. . . .

'It was a close call,' said Galeni. 'A hyper-isolationist faction aligned with Count Vortrifrani plotted to suicide-drop an old jump-freighter named the Yarrow square on the Imperial Residence. It would have taken out most of the place even without the explosives they'd packed it with. The explosives were their one mistake, since that was the loose thread that led Haroche s team to them. Vortrifrani distanced himself like crazy, but it broke up his support, and the Imperium has been less, ah, embarrassed by him since.'

Ivan blinked. 'My mother's flat isn't far from the Residence. …'

'Yes, one wonders how many people in Vorbarr Sultana they'd have taken out if they'd missed their drop point.'

'Thousands,' Miles muttered.

'I'll have to remember to thank Haroche, next time I see him,' said Ivan, sounding impressed.

'I was off-world, at the time,' Miles sighed. 'As usual.' He suppressed an irrational twinge of jealousy. 'Nobody ever said anything to me about this proposed promotion. When . . . was this vile little surprise supposed to be sprung?'

'Within the year, apparently.'

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