“Not . . . ?” breathed Miles. The full import of the timing of Illyan’s visit now dawned on him. Not anxiety for an injured subordinate after all. But to put his questions to Miles just post-surgery, when Miles was weak, hurting, drugged, maybe confused . . . “Why don’t you just fast-penta me and get it over with?” Miles snarled.

“Because I have the report about your idiosyncratic reaction to truth drugs,” said Illyan equably. “Unfortunate, that.”

“You could twist my arm.” There was a bitter taste in Miles’s mouth.

Illyan’s expression was dry and grim. “I thought about it. Then I decided to let the surgeons do it for me.”

“You can be a real sonofabitch some days, Simon, do you know?”

“Yes.” Illyan sat unmoved and unmoving. Waiting. Watching. “Your father cannot afford a scandal in his government this month. Not during this appropriations fight. This plot must be quashed regardless of its truth. What is said in this room will remain—must remain—between you and me alone. But I must know.”

“Are you offering me an amnesty?” Miles’s voice was low, dangerous. He could feel his heart begin to pound.

“If necessary.” Illyan’s voice was perfectly flat.

Miles couldn’t clench or even feel his fists, but his toes curled. He found himself gulping for air in the pulsing waves of his rage; the room seemed to waver. “You . . . vile . . . bastard! You dare call me a thief. . . .” He rocked in the bed, kicking off tangling strangling covers. His medical monitor began to bleep alarms. His arms were useless weights hanging from his shoulders, flopping nervelessly. “As if I would steal from Barrayar. As if I would steal from my own dead . . .” He swung his feet out, pulled himself upright with a mighty wrench of abdominal muscles. Dizzied, half-blacking-out, he toppled forward precipitously with no hands to catch himself.

Illyan leapt to grab him before he smashed facefirst on the matting. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, boy?” Miles wasn’t sure himself.

“What are you doing to my patient?” the white-faced military doctor cried, plunging through the door. “This man just had major surgery!”

The doctor was frightened and furious; the corpsman, in his wake, merely frightened. He tried to impede his superior, plucking at his arm and hissing, “Sir, that’s Security Chief Illyan!”

“I know who he is. I don’t care if he’s Emperor Dorca’s ghost. I will not have him carrying on his . . . business, here.” The doctor glared courageously at Illyan. “Your interrogation, or whatever, can take place in your own damned headquarters. I will not have that kind of thing going on in my hospital. This patient is not released to anybody yet!”

Illyan looked at first baffled, then outraged. “I was not . . .”

Miles considered, briefly, clutching artistically at certain nerve junctions in his body and screaming, except that he wasn’t equipped to clutch at anything just at present. “Appearances can be so damning,” he purred in Illyan’s ear, sinking in Illyan’s arms. He grinned evilly through clenched teeth. His body shook, shocky, the sheen of cold sweat on his forehead quite unfeigned.