"Yeah, I . . . guess it would hit a nerve, at that." She wondered if the ghost of his first wife ever hovered by him, breathing cold death in his ear, as Vorrutyer's ghost sometimes did by her. He looked deathly enough. "But I'm Cordelia, remember? Not . . . anybody else."

He leaned his forehead against hers. "Forgive me, dear Captain. I'm just an ugly scared old man, and growing older and uglier and more paranoid every day."

"You, too?" She rested in his arms. "I take exception to the old and ugly part, though. Pigheaded did not refer to your exterior appearance."

"Thank you—I think."

It pleased her to amuse him even that little. "It is the job, isn't it?" she said. "Can you talk about it at all?"

His lips compressed. "In confidence—although that seems to be your natural state, I don't know why I bother to emphasize it—it looks like we could have another war on our hands before the end of the year. And we're not nearly well enough recovered for it, after Escobar."

"What! I thought the war party was half-paralyzed."

"Ours is. The Cetagandans' is still in good working order, however. Intelligence indicates they were planning to use the political chaos here following Ezar Vorbarra's death to cover a move on those disputed wormhole jump points. Instead they got me, and—well, I can hardly call it stability. Dynamic equilibrium, at best. Anyway, not the kind of disruption they were counting on. Hence that little incident with the sonic grenade. Negri and Illyan are now seventy percent sure it was Cetagandan work."

"Will they . . . try again?"

"Almost certainly. But with or without me, consensus in the Staff is that they'll be probing in force before the end of the year. And if we're weak—they'll just keep right on moving until they're stopped."

"No wonder you've been . . . abstracted."

"Is that the polite term for it? But no. I've known about the Cetagandans for some time. Something else came up today, after the Council session. A private audience. Count Vorhalas came to see me, to beg a favor."

"I'd think it would be your pleasure, to do a favor for Rulf Vorhalas's brother. I gather not?"

He shook his head unhappily. "The Count's youngest son, who is a hotheaded young idiot of eighteen who should have been sent to military school—you met him at the Council confirmation, as I recall—"

"Lord Carl?"

"Yes. He got into a drunken fight at a party last night."

"A universal tradition. Such things happen even on Beta Colony."

"Quite. But they stepped outside to settle their affair armed, each one, with a pair of dull swords that had been part of a wall decoration, and a couple of kitchen knives. That made it, technically, a duel with the two swords."

"Uh-oh. Was anyone hurt?"