The lighted You Are Here arrow horrified Jin.  They were nowhere near the south side of town, as he'd hoped from how far they'd trudged.  They'd somehow ended up on the residential east side, instead, and still had maybe thirty kilometers left to hike before they reached the light industrial zone of the south, quite as far as they'd already come.  Well, that explained why the houses were so nice around here.  Jin stepped closer, squinting.

Just two stops farther on this line was the very station he'd exited to reach the Barrayaran consulate.  It was about a three-kilometer walk above ground.  Jin stared, thinking.  He had dimly planned to offer Mina's money to Miles-san, when they arrived at their destination, but his sister was proving pretty tightfisted, in Jin's view.  She was sure to set up a screech, even though Jin was nearly certain Miles-san would replace it as soon as he could.  But if he stopped at the consulate first and explained his loss, editing his situation a bit maybe, would they give him more money for the Barrayaran?  Miles-san seemed fairly important to them.  And they wouldn't turn Jin in, because they were protecting their own secrets, right?

Contemplating this confession made him feel a little sick, but not as sick as going all the way back to Miles-san empty-handed as well as three days late.  He stared harder at the map, trying to memorize the streets and turns.

"I know where we're going now," he said to Mina, trying to sound confident and big-brotherly.  "Come on."

#

After the WhiteChrys groundcar dropped them all off again at the consulate, Roic followed m'lord upstairs and watched him down two headache tabs and several glasses of water.  Returning to the entry hall, m'lord stuck his head into the room Roic thought of as the parlor, where Raven Durona had been left to cool his heels, and said, "Debriefing downstairs again, I think."

Raven nodded and unfolded himself to tag along.  There had been little conversation on the way home; Aida had still been escorting, m'lord had settled into himself heavy-eyed, Vorlynkin had stared out the canopy with a set jaw, Roic considered himself an observer, and Raven had been disinclined to buck the obvious trend.  They arrived downstairs at the door to the tight-room to discover it closed and locked.

M'lord hit the intercom.  "Vorlynkin?  Are you in there?  Open up."

"Just a moment, m'lord," Vorlynkin's voice came from the speaker.  The moment turned into several minutes, while m'lord tapped his foot and Raven sat on the nearby step and yawned.

"Reminds me of a house with only one bathroom when the relatives have come to visit," remarked Roic, as the wait stretched.

M'lord cast him a dry look.  "I wouldn't know.  I've never lived in a house with only one bathroom."  Roic returned him an ironic head-tilt.