The baby was moving within her, flutters, kneading turns; evidently the teratogenic antidote was a very slow-acting poison. They were still granted a little time together, it seemed, and she loved him through her skin, her fingertips moving in a slow massage over her abdomen. Welcome, my son, to Barrayar, the abode of cannibals; this place didn't even wait the usual eighteen or twenty years to eat you. Ravenous planet.

She was bedded down in a luxurious private room in a VIP wing, hastily cleared for their exclusive use. She was relieved to discover Vorkosigan had been ensconced just across the hall. Dressed already in green military-issue pajamas, he came promptly over to see her tucked into bed. She managed a small smile for him, but did not attempt to sit up. The force of gravity was pulling her down into the center of the world. Only the rigidity of the bed, the building, the planet's crust, held her up against it, not her will at all.

He was trailed by an anxious corpsman, saying, "Remember, sir, try not to talk so much, till after the doctor's had a chance to give your throat the irrigation treatment."

The grey light of dawn was making the windows pale. He sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand, rubbing it. "You're cold, dear Captain," he whispered hoarsely. She nodded. Her chest ached, her throat was raw, and her sinuses burned.

"I should never have let them talk me into taking the job," he went on. "So sorry . . ."

"I talked you into it, too. You tried to warn me. Not your fault. It seemed right for you. Is right."

He shook his head. "Don't talk. Makes scar tissue on the vocal cords."

She gave vent to a joyless "Ha!" and laid a finger across his lips as he started to speak again. He nodded, resigned, and they remained looking at each other for a time. He pushed her tangled hair back gently from her face, and she captured the broad hand to hold against her cheek for comfort, until he was hunted out by a posse of doctors and technicians and driven off for a treatment. "We'll be in to see you shortly, Milady," their chieftain promised ominously.

They returned after a while, to make her gargle a nasty pink fluid, and breathe into a machine, then rumbled out again. A female nurse brought her breakfast, which she did not touch.

Then a committee of grim-faced doctors entered her room. The one who had come from the Imperial Residence in the night was now smartly groomed and neatly dressed in civilian clothes. Her own personal physician was flanked by a younger, black-browed man in Service greens with captain's tabs on his collar. She gazed at their three faces and thought of Cerberus.

Her man introduced the stranger. "This is Captain Vaagen, of the Imperial Military Hospital's research facility. He's our resident expert on military poisons."