One man stepped down the stairs slowly and carefully, leaning on the railing. Miles recognized him instantly, and quelled an impulse to try to duck behind the nearest topiaried bush. Lieutenant Vorberg. Vorberg had never seen Admiral Naismith, only a sawed-off suit of combat armor. It had apparently been Gregor's day to hand out various Imperial recognitions, for a new decoration gleamed on Vorberg's chest, the one for being wounded in the Emperor's Service. Miles had half a jar full of similar ones at home in a drawer; at some point Illyan had stopped issuing them to him anymore, perhaps fearing that Miles's threat to don them all at once sometime was not facetious. But it was clearly the first serious honor Vorberg had ever had occasion to collect, for he wore it with a bemused self-consciousness.

Miles couldn't help himself. "Ah—Vorberg, is it?" he essayed, as the lieutenant passed him.

Vorberg blinked uncertainly at him, then his face cleared. "Vorkosigan, yes? I've seen you around Galactic Affairs HQ on Komarr, I believe." He nodded cordially, one ImpSec courier and fellow Vor to another.

"Where'd you collect the bad luck charm?" Miles nodded to Vorberg's chest. "Or should I not ask?"

"It's not that classified. I was on a routine—fairly routine—run out past Zoave Twilight. Bunch of goddamn hijackers captured the ship I was on."

"Not one of our courier ships! Surely I'd have heard about that. It would have been a major flap."

"I wish it had been. ImpSec might have sent a proper force after me for that. It was just a commercial freighter of Zoavan registry. So anyway, ImpSec in its infinite wisdom, and doubtless under the advice of the same budget-pinching accountants who booked me on that damned ship in the first place, scraped up some low-bidder merc outfit to try and spring me. It was a real foul-up." He lowered his voice confidentially. "If you're ever out that way yourself, avoid the collection of clowns calling itself the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. They're deadly."

"Isn't that the idea?"

"Not to your own side it's not."

"Oh." Someone must have told Vorberg he'd been hit by friendly fire. The surgeon, probably: she was incurably honest. "But I've heard of the Dendarii. I mean, obviously they have some renegade Barrayarans in their ranks, or they wouldn't have named themselves after my District's chief geographical feature. Unless they had some military history buff who was impressed by my grandfather's guerrilla campaigns."

"Their exec officer was some expatriate Barrayaran, yes. I met him. Their commander's rumored to be Betan. Apparently he escaped Betan therapy."

"I thought the Dendarii were supposed to be good."

"Not notably."

"You're here, aren't you?" said Miles, nettled. He controlled himself. "So . . . are you going back on duty?"