"Flowers?" hazarded Miles. "Dancing maids?" Er . . . soap and towels? She was right, he hadn't thought of everything.

"I can hardly wait to find out."

"Well, whatever she comes up with, I'm sure it will be done right."

"With her, you can count on that," agreed Illyan. "Reliable woman." Unlike some men of Illyan's generation Miles knew, he did not seem to find this a contradiction in terms. He hesitated, and looked through narrowed eyes at Miles. "I seem to remember . . . she was here. At some rather unpleasant moments."

"That she was. In style."

"With Lady Alys, how else?" Illyan glanced around the little patient room, as if really seeing it for the first time in weeks. "Your respected aunt is right. This place is dismal."

"Then let's blow out of here."

They decamped from ImpSec HQ with only one valise and very little further fuss. Illyan had been traveling light for more years than Miles had been alive, after all.

Martin wafted them back to Vorkosigan House in the fusty luxury of the old armored groundcar. They arrived at Illyan's new digs to find Alys directing a cleanup crew, who were just departing. Flowers, soap and towels, and fresh sheets had been laid on. If Miles ever made good his threat to turn Vorkosigan House into a hotel, he knew who he wanted to hire for his general manager. Martin spent all of five minutes distributing Illyan's meager belongings to their new storage, then was packed off by Alys to the kitchen.

Illyan's slight awkwardness at all these attentions was relieved by the return of Martin trundling a tea cart laden with a mighty afternoon snack a la Ma Kosti. He laid the spread on the sitting room's table, overlooking the back garden through an outcurving window. Lady Alys's hand was apparent in the service; all the correct trays and utensils seemed to have been found at last, and put to their proper uses. But after a round of tea and cream, little sandwiches, stuffed eggs, meatballs in plum sauce, the famous spiced peach tarts, sweet wine, and some decorated killer chocolate things with the density of plutonium that Miles didn't even know the name of, everybody was relaxed.

Into the replete and meditative silence that followed the demolishing of the tea, Miles at last dared to float a question.

"So, Simon. What's it like? What can you remember now, of the last few weeks, and, um . . . before?" What have we done to you?

Illyan, half-engulfed by the soft upholstery of the armchair in which he leaned back, grimaced. "The last few weeks seem very fragmentary. Before that . . . is fragmentary too." The hand twitch, again. "It feels like . . . as if a man who'd always had perfect vision had a glass helmet all smeared with grease and mud fastened over his head. Except . . . I can't get it off. Can't break it. Can't breathe."