to it anyway. He found the comm link technician at work at the electron microscope bench of the Triumph's engineering repairs section. Elena Visconti frowned at his gesture of invitation, but turned the work over to her assistant and came slowly to Miles's side.
'Sir?'
'Trainee Visconti. Ma'am. Can we take a walk?'
'What for?'
'Just to talk.'
'If it's what I think, you may as well save your breath. I can't go to her.'
'I'm not any more comfortable talking about it than you are, but it's an obligation I cannot honorably evade.'
'I've spent eighteen years trying to put what happened at Escobar behind me. Must I be dragged through it again?'
'This is the last time, I promise. I'm leaving tomorrow. The Dendarii fleet will follow soon after. All you short-contract people will be dropped off at Dalton Station, where you can take ship for Tau Ceti or wherever you want. I suppose you'll be going home?'
She fell in reluctantly beside him, and they paced down the corridor. 'Yes, my employers will doubtless be astonished at how much back pay they owe me.'
'I owe you something myself. Baz says you were outstanding on the mission.'
She shrugged. 'Straightforward stuff.'
'He didn't mean just your technical efforts. Anyway, I didn't want to leave Elena—my Elena—up in the air like this, you see,' he began. 'She ought to at least have something, to replace what was taken from her. Some little crumb of comfort.'
'The only thing she lost was some illusion. And believe me, Admiral Naismith, or whatever you are, the only thing I could give her would be another illusion. Maybe if she didn't look so much like him … Anyway, I don't want her following me around, or showing up at my door.'
'Whatever Sergeant Bothari was guilty of, she is surely innocent.'
Elena Visconti rubbed her forehead wearily with the back of her hand. 'I'm not saying you're not right. I'm just saying I can't. For me, she radiates nightmares.'
Miles chewed his lip gently. They turned out of the Triumph into a flex tube and walked across the quiet docking bay. Only a few techs were busy at some small tasks.
'An illusion …' he mused. 'You could live a long time on an illusion,' he offered. 'Maybe even a lifetime, if you're lucky. Would it be so difficult, to do a few days—even a few minutes—of acting? I'm going to have to dip some Dendarii funds anyway to pay for a dead ship, and buy a lady a new face. I could make it worth your time.'
He regretted his words immediately at the loathing that flashed across her face, but the look she finally gave him was ironically thoughtful.
'You really care about that girl, don't you?'
'Yes.'
'I thought she was making time with your chief engineer.'
'Suits me.'
'Pardon my slowness, but that does not compute.'
'Association with me could be lethal, where I'm going next. I'd rather she were travelling in the opposite direction.'
The next docking bay was busy and noisy with a Felician freighter being loaded with ingots of refined rare metals, vital to the Felician war industries. They avoided it, and searched out another quiet corridor. Miles found himself fingering the bright scarf in his pocket.
'He dreamed of you for eighteen years too, you know,' he said suddenly. It wasn't what he meant to say. 'He had this fantasy. You were his wife, in all honor. He held it so hard, I think it was real to him, at least part of the time. That's how he made it so real for Elena. You can touch hallucinations. Hallucinations can even touch you.'
The Escobaran woman, pale, paused to lean against the wall and swallow. Miles pulled the scarf from his pocket and crumpled it anxiously in his hands; he had an absurd impulse to offer it to her, heaven knew what for—a basin?
'I'm sorry,' Elena said at last. 'But the very thought that he was pawing over me in his twisted imagination all these years makes me ill.'
'He was never an easy person …' Miles began inanely, then cut himself off. He paced, frustrated, two steps, turn, two steps. He then took a gulp of air, and flung himself to one knee before the Escobaran woman.
'Ma'am. Konstantine Bothari sends me to beg your forgiveness for the wrongs he did you. Keep your revenge, if you will—it is your just right—but be satisfied,' he implored her. 'At least give me a death-offering to burn for him, some token. I give him aid in this as his go-between by my right as his leige lord, his friend, and, as he was a father's hand, held over me in protection all my life, as his son.'
Elena Visconti was backed up against the wall as though cornered. Miles, still on one knee, shuffled back a step and shrank into himself, as if to crush all hint of pride and coercion to the deck.
'Damned if I'm not starting to think you're as weird—you're no Betan,' she muttered. 'Oh, do get up. What if somebody comes down this corridor?'
'Not until you give me a death-offering,' he said firmly.
'What do you want from me? What's a death-offering?'
'Something of yourself, that you burn, for the peace of the soul of the dead. Sometimes you burn it for friends or relatives, sometimes for the souls of slain enemies, so they don't come back to haunt you. A lock of hair would do.' He ran his hand over a short gap in his own crown. 'That wedge represents twenty-two dead Pelians last month.'
'Some local superstition, is it?'
He shrugged helplessly. 'Superstition, custom—I've always thought of myself as an agnostic. It's only lately that I've come to—to need for men to have souls. Please. I won't bother you any more.'
She blew out her breath in troubled exasperation. 'Well—well … Give me that knife in your belt, then. But get up.'
He rose, and handed her his grandfather's dagger. She sawed off a short curl. 'Is that enough?'
'Yes, that's fine.' He took it in his palm, cool and silken like water, and closed his fingers over it. 'Thank you.'
She shook her head. 'Crazy …' Wistfulness stole over her face. 'It allays ghosts, does it?'
'It is said,' replied Miles gently. 'I'll make it a proper offering. My word on it.' He inhaled shakily. 'And as I have given you my word, I'll bother you no more. Excuse me, ma'am. We both have other duties.'
'Sir.'
They passed through the flex tube to the Triumph, turned each away. But the Escobaran woman looked back over her shoulder.
'You are mistaken, little man,' she called softly. 'I believe you're going to bother me for a long time yet.'
Next he searched out Arde Mayhew.
'I'm afraid I never was able to do you the good I intended,' Miles apologized. 'I have managed to find a Felician shipmaster who will buy the RG132 for an inner-system freighter. He's offering about a dime on the dollar, but it's cash up front. I thought we could split it.'
'At least it's an honorable retirement,' sighed Mayhew. 'Better than having Calhoun tear it to pieces.'
'I'm leaving for home tomorrow, via Beta Colony. I could drop you off, if you want.'
Mayhew shrugged. 'There's nothing on Beta for me.' He looked up more sharply. 'What happened to all this leigeman stuff? I thought I was working for you.'
'I—don't really think you'd fit in on Barrayar,' said Miles carefully. The pilot officer must not follow him home. Betan or no, the deadly bog of Barrayaran politics could suck him down without a bubble, in the vortex of his leige lord's fall. 'But you could certainly have a place with the Dendarii Mercenaries. What rank would you like?'
