Illyan frowned at him, but put him back to bed very carefully.

“It’s all right,” Miles wheezed to the doctor. “It’s all right. I was merely . . . merely . . .” Upset didn’t quite seem to cover it; he’d felt for a moment as if the top of his head had been about to blow off. “Never mind.” He felt horribly unbalanced. To think that Illyan, whom he’d known all his life, whom he’d assumed trusted him implicitly or why else send him on a series of such distant, independent missions . . . He’d been proud to be so trusted, while still a young officer, with so little direct supervision in his covert ops . . . Could his whole career to date have been, not desperately needed Service to the Imperium, but just a ploy to get a dangerously clumsy Vor puppy out from underfoot? Toy soldiers . . . no, that made no sense. A peculator. Ugly word. What a profound slur upon his honor, and his wit; as if he did not know where Imperial funds came from, or at what cost.

The black anger sagged into a black depression. His heart hurt. He felt smeared. Could Illyan—Illyan!—really think, even for one hypothetical moment . . . Yes, Illyan could. Illyan would not be here, not doing this, if he were not genuinely worried the charge could be proved true. To his dismay, Miles found himself silently crying. Damn the drugs.

Illyan was staring at him in considerable disquiet. “One way or another, Miles, I must defend your expenditures—which are my department’s expenditures—tomorrow.”

“I’d rather be court-martialed.”

Illyan’s lips thinned. “I’ll come back later. When you’ve had a chance to sleep. Perhaps you’ll be more coherent.”

The doctor fussed over him, zapped him with yet another damned drug, and left. Leadenly, Miles turned his face to the wall; not to sleep, but to remember.

The Mountains of Mourning

Miles heard the woman weeping as he was climbing the hill from the long lake. He hadn't dried himself after his swim, as the morning already promised shimmering heat. Lake water trickled cool from his hair onto his naked chest and back, more annoyingly down his legs from his ragged shorts. His leg braces chafed on his damp skin as he pistoned up the faint trail through the scrub, military double-time. His feet squished in his old wet shoes. He slowed curiously as he became conscious of the voices.

The woman's voice grated with grief and exhaustion. "Please, lord, please. All I want is m'justice. . . ."

The front gate guard's voice was irritated and embarrassed. "I'm no lord. C'mon, get up, woman. Go back to the village and report it at the district magistrate's office."

"I tell you, I just came from there!" The woman did not move from her knees as Miles emerged from the bushes and paused to take in the tableau across the paved road. "The magistrate's not to return for weeks, weeks. I walked four days to get here. I only have a little money. . . ." A desperate hope rose in her voice, and her spine bent and straightened as she scrabbled in her skirt pocket and held out her cupped hands to the guard. "A mark and twenty pence, it's all I have, but—"