Mina had scrunched her chair closer and closer to where Jin rocked in his.  An audible sniffle escaped her, which made both Miles-san and Vorlynkin crank their heads around.  Miles-san lurched and lifted a hand toward her, stopped short, and gestured at Jin instead, who, thus compelled, gave his sister a clumsy pat on the shoulder that only made her eyes fill up and overflow for real.

"Lord Vorkosigan, for pity's sake, enough for tonight," said Consul Vorlynkin.  "These children have to be exhausted.  Both of them."

Jin could wish he hadn't added that last.  His eyes stung in contagion with Mina's.  Now he was offered it, Jin wasn't so sure he wanted sympathy—it eroded his resolve as annoying bracing remarks never did.

"To be sure," said Miles-san immediately.  "Baths, I think, and we can give them both Roic's room.  He can bunk in with me.  I expect some clean T-shirts would do for nightclothes.  Toothbrushes?"

Miles-san and Vorlynkin arguing, Jin discovered, were not nearly so daunting as the pair of them united in sudden agreement.  The ordinary business of bedtime blocked further tears.  Jin expected Mina found the consulate house stranger than he did.  He'd slept in parks, after all, and in all sorts of odd crannies at Suze-san's.  Vorlynkin even donated a fancy sonic toothbrush, though Jin and Mina had then to share it, with a trip through its sterilizing holder between customers.

At last they were tucked up in clean sheets in a warm, quiet room.  Jin waited for the door to softly shut, and the grownups' feet to clump away back downstairs, before wriggling up and switching on the bedside lamp.  Mina threw back her covers and helped him extract Lady Murasaki's box from her backpack.  She watched closely as Jin opened the lid to give their pet a breath of fresh air, and helped by tossing in one of the little powdery beige moths they'd collected earlier, while Jin's fingers blocked the prisoner from escaping.  He set the plastic box back on the table between their beds.

"Is she going to eat it?" Mina asked, peering through the lid.

"I'm not sure.  She might only go for live prey."

Mina frowned thoughtfully.  "They have that big garden out back.  I bet we could catch more bugs tomorrow."

A reassuring notion.  Jin lay back down and pulled up his sheets, and Mina reached to turn out the lamp again before any betraying line of light showed under the bedroom door.

After a while, Mina's whisper came out of the dark: "Do you really think your galactic can get Mommy back?  No one else ever could."