"Father's not here. He's on a diplomatic mission from me to some of his old cronies. Here, you, Kou—take Bothari and set him up with quarters, food chits, passes, and clothes. I'll want your personal report immediately I've seen to Cordelia, Sergeant."

"Yes, sir." Koudelka led Bothari away.

"Bothari was amazing," Cordelia confided to Aral. "No—that's unjust. Bothari was Bothari, and I shouldn't have been amazed at all. We wouldn't have made it without him."

Aral nodded, smiling a little. "I thought he would do for you."

"He did indeed."

Droushnakovi, taking up her old position at Cordelia's elbow the moment Bothari vacated it, shook her head in doubt, and followed along as Aral steered Cordelia down the corridor. The rest of the parade followed less certainly.

"Hear any more about Illyan?" Cordelia asked.

"Not yet. Did Kou brief you?"

"A sketch, enough for now. I don't suppose any more word's come in on Padma and Alys Vorpatril, then, either?"

He shook his head regretfully. "But neither are they on the list of Vordarian's confirmed captures. I think they're hiding in the city. Vordarian's side is leaking information like a sieve, we'd know if any arrest that important had happened. I can only wonder if our own arrangements are so porous. That's the trouble with these damned civil affrays, everybody has a brother—"

A voice from down the corridor hailed loudly, "Sir! Oh, sir!" Only Cordelia felt Aral flinch, his arm jerking under her hand.

An HQ staffer led a tall man in black fatigues with colonel's tabs on the collar toward them. "There you are, sir. Colonel Gerould is here from Marigrad."

"Oh. Good. I have to see this man now. . . ." Aral looked around hurriedly, and his eye fell on Droushnakovi. "Drou, please escort Cordelia to the infirmary for me. Get her checked, get her—get her everything."

The colonel was no HQ desk pilot. He looked, in fact, as if he'd just flown in from some front line, wherever the "front" was in this war for loyalties. His fatigues were dirty and wrinkled and looked slept-in, their smoke-stink eclipsing Cordelia's mountain-reek. His face was lined with fatigue. But he looked only grim, not beaten. "The fighting in Marigrad has gone house-to-house, Admiral," he reported without preamble.

Vorkosigan grimaced. "Then I want to hopscotch it. Come with me to the tactics room—what is that on your arm, Colonel?"

A wide piece of white cloth and a narrower strip of brown circled the officer's black upper left sleeve. "ID, sir. We couldn't tell who we were shooting at, up close. Vordarian's people are wearing red and yellow, 's as close as they could come to maroon and gold, I guess. That's supposed to be brown and silver for Vorkosigan, of course."