Miles cleared his throat, and tried to rub the weird smile back off his face. "Sorry. I just figured out why it was I hadn't gone to get my head fixed yet." And he'd thought Naismith was the sly one. Vorkosigan's Last Stand, eh? "It struck me as funny." Hilarious, in fact. He stood up, stifling another giggle.

"You're not going to try and go back in there, are you?" asked Martin in alarm.

"No. Not directly. Vorkosigan House first. Home, Martin."

He showered again, to wash off the morning's accumulation of rain and city grime, but mostly to scrub out the unpleasant, lingering scent of shame. His mother's people's custom of the baptism crossed his thoughts, as well. A towel around his waist, he visited several closets and drawers to lay out his clothing for inspection.

He had not worn his Vorkosigan House uniform for several years, not even for the Emperor's Birthdays or the Winterfair Balls, casting it aside in favor of what had seemed, to him, the higher status of real Imperial military Service uniforms, dress greens or parade red-and-blues. He laid the brown fabric out on his bed, empty as a snake's shed skin. He inspected the seams and the silver embroidery of the Vorkosigan logos on collar and shoulders and sleeves carefully for wear or damage, but some meticulous servant had put it all away clean and covered, and it was in excellent shape. The dark brown boots too came out of their protective bag still softly gleaming.

Counts and their heirs, honorably retired from more active Imperial service, were permitted by ancient custom to wear their military decorations on their House uniforms, in recognition of the Vor's official and historical status as—what was that dippy phrase? "The Sinews of the Imperium, the Emperor's Right Arm." Nobody'd ever called them the Brains of the Imperium, Miles noted dryly. So how come no one had ever claimed to be, say, the Gall Bladder of the Imperium, or the Emperor's Pancreas? Some metaphors were best left unexamined.

Miles had never once worn all his accumulated honors, in part because four-fifths of them related to classified activities, and what fun was a decoration you couldn't tell a good story about, and in part because . . . why? Because they'd belonged to Admiral Naismith?