"I wouldn't have picked now to quit, mind you," said Illyan. "I would have liked to have seen Gregor through his wedding."

"And the next crisis after that," Miles twitted him. "And the next crisis after that, and . . ."

Illyan grunted resigned agreement. "So . . . maybe this isn't so bad." He added after a time, "Do you suppose all the fish in your lake have been stolen?"

"They'd have to catch 'em first."

"Ah. Good point." Illyan paused to fish up the net bag, and open another beer for himself, and hand one to Miles. He was halfway through the bottle when he said, "I . . . know how much the Dendarii meant to you. I'm . . . pleased you survived."

He did not say I'm sorry, Miles noted. Miles's disaster had been a self-inflicted wound. "Death, where is thy sting?" He jiggled his rod. "Hook, where is thy fish . . . ? No. Suicide wasn't an option for me anymore, I found. Not like good old adolescent angst. I'm no longer of the secret opinion that death will somehow overlook me if I don't do something personally about it. And given life . . . it seems stupid not to make the most of what I do have. Not to mention deucedly ungrateful."

"D'you think . . . you and Quinn . . . how to put this delicately. D'you think you will be able to persuade Captain Quinn to take an interest in Lord Vorkosigan?"

Ah. Illyan was trying to apologize for screwing up Miles's love-life, that was it. Miles drank more beer, and thought it over seriously. "I never was able to before. I want to try. . . . I have to try one more time with her. Again." When? How? Where? It hurt, to think of Quinn. It hurt still, to let himself think of the Dendarii at all. Therefore, he would not. Much. More beer. "As for the rest of it . . ."—he sipped, and smiled bitterly—"there is some convincing evidence that I was slowing down too much to play a moving target much longer. Really, my favorite missions lately scarcely engaged any military force."

"You were getting frigging clever, is all," opined Illyan, gazing at Miles's distorted form through the colored glass of his bottle. "Though even a war of maneuver requires a credible force to maneuver with."

"I liked the winning," Miles said softly. "That, I really liked."

Illyan chucked his bottle into the box with the rest of the empties, and leaned over to squint down into the lake water. He sighed, and got up and adjusted the awning again, and pulled up the string bag once more, in lieu of fish.

Miles held up his half-empty bottle, to repel the offered refill, and settled back, and watched his still white line, descending down and down into secret darkness. "I always got away with it somehow. Any way I could. On the table or under it, I won. This seizure thing . . . seems like the first enemy I couldn't outsmart."