Skinny looked scornful, but maybe give the idea time to work?  Roic had more pressing concerns.  "Lord Vorkosigan—t' fellow I work for, you can't mistake him, top of his head would be about level with your shoulder, carries a cane, talks a blue streak—is he here?"

Was that blank look feigned?  Roic wasn't sure.  He went on more urgently, "Because if he is, you've got to put us in a room together.  I'm his private medtech, and he needs me.  He gets these terrible seizures.  He's a very important Vor lord, back on Barrayar.  They'd pay a lot to get him back unharmed.  But if he dies on you, well, you've no idea how ugly it could get."  Roic wasn't sure how far to push this theme.  M'lord had presumably been keeping a low profile here for a reason, and Roic didn't want to run the ransom price up inadvertently.

Lord Vorkosigan's post-cryorevival seizures actually consisted of him sinking down, shivering with his eyes rolled back for a couple of minutes in an unattractive manner, and then waking up very, very cranky.  The fits were unlikely to be fatal, at least since Lady Vorkosigan had extracted his promise never, ever to attempt to drive himself in any powered vehicle—ground car, aircar, lightflyer, shuttle, or mode unnamed.  Horses and bicycles had been a compromise, and though m'lord hated the helmets, he did comply.

Skinny didn't need to know this, however, so Roic embroidered the medical facts to the limit of his invention till Skinny, doubt growing in his eyes, weakened and said, "All right!  I'll ask."  He added—as no professional would have—"I didn't see anyone who looked like that guy here, though."

Skinny withdrew, leaving Roic thinking, Uh-huh.  Minion, not master.  Skinny seemed a type Roic had met often in his early days as a street guard in the Vorkosigan District capital of Hassadar.  While not reliable enough to be put in charge of anything more complicated than a dishwasher, they were very easy to convince that all their troubles were someone else's fault.  Roic knew this because they used to tell him so, at great and often incoherent length, while he was hauling them somewhere safe to sleep off their current binge of drink or drugs or arguments.  That didn't mean they couldn't be truly dangerous, especially when they found themselves in over their heads, and it didn't take a very deep pool of troubles to manage that, either.

His own pool seemed an abyss, right now.  Did the Legacy Liberators' plans for their captives include killing them one by one till their demands were met?  Our fringe loonies on Barrayar sure would, Roic thought semi-proudly.  Yet the affair had been oddly bloodless, so far—stunners and sleepy-drugs, not needlers and nerve gas.  But maybe, maybe—dare he hope?—m'lord wasn't in their queue.