The afternoon sun warmed the consulate's back garden, murmurous with creatures.  Gyre preened and muttered on his perch.  The chickens scratched in the grass or dozed in their nest boxes.  The sphinx nosed and mumbled among the flower beds, occasionally sneezing just like Jin's mom.  Gracing the tabletop, the turtle slowly crunched a piece of lettuce, donated from Mina's lunch salad.  Lucky sat in Jin's mother's lap and purred, unsheathing her claws whenever the stroking hand stopped, apparently demanding to be petted bald.  Granted that the rats, let out for a run earlier and then fed special tidbits, just curled up and slept in their cages, but then they never made much noise in the first place.  It was all very alive out here, Jin thought with satisfaction.

They had brought out a table to eat lunch under a tree, Mom and Jin and Mina and Consul Vorlynkin, and Aunt Lorna, invited for the first time to visit her revived sister.  Jin had been horrified when he'd learned she was coming, but since she wanted him back in her household quite as little as he wanted to go there, they'd actually ended up on the same side, in a weird sort of way.  She still seized the chance to chide him for running off.  Both times.

"She's right, Jin," his mother endorsed this.  "They were all very upset when they didn't know what had happened to you.  You might have been killed, for all she and your uncle knew."

"But if I hadn't run away," Jin said, "I'd never have met Miles-san.  And Mom would still be frozen."

Vorlynkin-san grinned at Aunt Lorna's flummoxed expression.  "Unassailable logic, I'm afraid."  He'd taken off his business coat in the warmth, and leaned back in his chair in his shirtsleeves, looking more relaxed than Jin had ever seen him.  But then, most of the time he'd been following Miles-san around, and Miles-san had a way of un-relaxing people.

Miles-san and Armsman Roic had left yesterday, to board an orbital shuttle and catch a jumpship to Escobar, from where, Consul Vorlynkin had explained to Jin and Mina with the aid of a wormhole map, the Lord Auditor would transfer to a ship bound for the planets Sergyar and Komarr, and finally to Barrayar, where his real home was.  The one with all those children and ponies, Jin supposed.  Despite the steady procession of lawyers, police, and journalists into and out of the consulate, not to mention Jin and Mina and their mother and now relatives, Jin had to admit it had grown a lot quieter around here since the little man had left.  It had all been very exciting for a time, but Jin wasn't sorry for the slowdown.  In any case, the parade of people had been closely supervised by the consul, at his most formal and intimidating, not to mention Barrayaran and tall, and nobody had tried to take Jin's mother away again.