"Grab him," Cordelia yelled to Bothari. Vordarian, shaking, his left hand clamped around his half-severed right wrist, was in poor condition to resist, though he kicked and shouted. His blood ran the color of Kareen's robe. Bothari locked Vordarian's head in a firm grip, nerve disruptor pressed to his skull.

"Out of here," snarled Cordelia, and kicked the door back open. "To the Emperor's chamber." To Miles. Vordarian's other guards, preparing to fire, held back at the sight of their master.

"Back off!" Bothari roared, and they fell away from the door. Cordelia grabbed Droushnakovi by the arm, and they stepped over Kareen's body. Her ivory limbs lay muddled in the red fabric, abstractly beautiful forms even in death. The women kept Bothari and Vordarian between themselves and Vordarian's troops, and retreated down the corridor.

"Pull that plasma arc out of my holster and start firing," Bothari savagely directed Cordelia. Yes; Bothari had managed to retrieve it in the melee, probably why his body count hadn't been higher.

"You can't set fire to the Residence," Drou gasped in horror.

A fortune in antiquities and Barrayaran historical artifacts were housed in this wing alone, no doubt. Cordelia grinned wildly, grabbed the weapon, and fired back down the corridor. Wooden furniture, wooden parquetry, and age-dry tapestries roared into flame as the beam's searing fingers touched them.

Burn, you. Burn for Kareen. Pile a death-offering to match her courage and agony, blazing higher and higher— As they reached the door of the old Emperor's bedchamber, she fired the hallway in the opposite direction for good measure. THAT for what you've done to me, and to my boy—the flames should hold back pursuit for a few minutes. She felt as though her body were floating, light as air. Is this how Bothari feels, when he kills?

Droushnakovi went for the wall panel to the secret ladder. She was functioning steadily now, as if her hands belonged to a different body than her tear-ravaged face. Cordelia dropped the sword on the bed and raced straight for the huge old carved oak wardrobe that stood against the near wall, and flung its doors wide. Green and amber lights glowed in the dim recesses of the center shelf. God, don't let it be another decoy. . . . Cordelia wrapped her arms around the canister and lifted it out into the light. The right weight, this time, heavy with fluids; the right readouts, the right numbers. The right one.

Thank you, Kareen. I didn't mean to kill you. Surely she was mad. She didn't feel anything, no grief or remorse, though her heart was racing and her breath came in gasps. A shocky combat-high, that immortal rush that made men charge machine guns. So this was what the war-addicts came for.