"How did he get in?" began Vorkosigan, and stopped. The man was wearing the black fatigues of the Service. "Surely not one of your men, Illyan!" His voice grated, metal on stone.

"My lord, we've got to have him alive, to question him," said Illyan uneasily at Vorkosigan's shoulder, half-hypnotized by the same look that had made the guards recoil. "There may be more to the conspiracy. You can't . . ."

The prisoner turned, then, to face his captors. A guard started forward to shove him back into position against the wall, but Vorkosigan motioned him away. Cordelia could not see Vorkosigan's face, standing behind him in that moment, but his shoulders lost their murderous tension, and the rage drained out of his backbone, leaving only a gutter-smear of pain. Above the insignialess black collar was the ravaged face of Evon Vorhalas.

"Oh, not both of them," breathed Cordelia.

Hatred hastened the rhythm of Vorhalas's breathing as he glared at his intended victim. "You bastard. You snake-cold bastard. Sitting there cold as stone while they hacked off his head. Did you feel a thing? Or did you enjoy it, my Lord Regent? I swore I'd get you then."

There was a long silence, then Vorkosigan leaned close to him, one arm extended past his head for support against the wall. He whispered hoarsely, "You missed me, Evon."

Vorhalas spat in his face, spittle bloody from his injured mouth. Vorkosigan made no move to wipe it away. "You missed my wife," he went on in a slow soft cadence. "But you got my son. Did you dream of sweet revenge? You have it. Look at her eyes, Evon. A man could drown in those sea-grey eyes. I'll be looking at them every day for the rest of my life. So eat vengeance, Evon. Drink it. Fondle it. Wrap it round you in the night watch. It's all yours. I will it all to you. For myself, I've gorged it to the gagging point, and have lost my stomach for it."

Vorhalas looked up, then, for the first time, past him to Cordelia. She thought of the child in her belly, his delicate girdering of new cartilagenous bones perhaps even now beginning to rot, twist, slough, but could not hate Vorhalas, although she tried to for a moment. She couldn't even find him baffling. She had a sense, as of a second sight, that she could see right through his wounded spirit the way doctors saw through a wounded body with their diagnostic viewers. Every twist and tear and emotional abrasion, every young cancer of resentment growing from them, and above all the great gash of his brother's death seemed red-lined in her mind's eye.

"He didn't enjoy it, Evon," she said. "What would you have had from him? Do you even know?"

"A little human pity," he snarled. "He could have saved Carl. Even then he could have. I thought at first that was why he had come."