It was bare of furnishings.  Some kind of old hotel room, he decided after a minute from the shape, stains, outlets, corroded-looking sprinkler overhead, and cheap light above the only door.  His mattress lay in what might once have been a clothes niche, opposite a small working bathroom with the door removed.  A chain bolted around his ankle led in turn to a bolt on the wall.  The links were long enough to let him use the facilities, he remembered that from the blurry night, but not to reach the outer door.

He visited them again, and, hoping to wash out more of the mush, drank thirstily from a flimsy plastic cup apparently left for his use.  A long, narrow window stretched above a stained bathtub.  He stared out onto a featureless rise crowded with tall, arrow-shaped conifers, dark and tangled.  He rapped on the glass; it gave back that dull tone that said unbreakable, at least by anyone not armed with a power drill or perhaps a plasma arc.

He tested the length of his chain.  It didn't go even halfway to the door, but by standing upright, he found he could see out the front picture window, un-obscured by curtains or a polarizing filter.  They must not expect visitors.  This room seemed to open onto a second-storey gallery.  The view beyond the railing ran downhill to a broad patch of flat scrub that curved out of sight, framed by more tangled taiga.  Not another building to be seen.

He wasn't in the city anymore, that was certain.  Had there been any urban glow on the horizon last night?  He could only remember the nightlight in the loo.  He could be ten kilometers from Northbridge or ten thousand, for all he knew.  Which could make a difference, later.

He folded his considerable length back onto the mattress, and began working at the bolt in the wall, the only item even remotely resembling a weak point.  It didn't budge, and his big fingers could scarcely get a purchase on the annoying little thing.  If only he could get it started wriggling . . .

How t' devil did I end up in this mess?  He imagined Armsman-commander Pym critiquing his actions of yesterday, and cringed.  This was a thousand times worse than the infamous bug butter debacle.  Yet it had all started so benignly, four weeks ago.

If abruptly, but there was nothing new to that—Lord Auditor Vorkosigan's galactic assignments from Emperor Gregor usually arrived abruptly.  After a dozen off-world trips in m'lord's wake, Roic was getting practiced at the scramble to arrange m'lord's luggage, in his role of sometime-bâtman, m'lord's and his own travel documents, in his role as personal assistant—the job title Roic traveled under, as explaining the ancient and honorable rank of Armsman to galactics was always a losing game—and m'lord's security.  And—though m'lord almost never discussed this aloud—private medtech for m'lord's lingering health issues.