"Yeah, I know that one. 'I want three volunteers, you, you, and you.' You used to bully me and your bodyguard's daughter around that way even before you were in the military, back when we were little kids. I remember."

"Born to command." Miles grinned briefly. Mark's brows lowered, as the apparently tried to imagine Miles as playground bully to the very large and healthy Ivan. "It's a mental trick," Miles informed him.

He studied Mark, who squatted uncomfortably, drawing his head down into his shoulders like a turtle against his gaze. Was this evil? Confusion, to be sure. Distortion of spirit as well as body—though Galen could have been only a little more awful as a child's mentor than Miles's own grandfather. But to be properly sociopathic one must be self-centered to an extreme degree, which did not seem to describe Mark; he had hardly been permitted to have a self at all. Maybe he was not self-centered enough. "Are you Evil?" Miles asked lightly.

"I'm a murderer, aren't I?" sneered Mark. "What more d'you want?"

"Was that murder? I thought I sensed some element of confusion."

"He grabbed the nerve disruptor. I didn't want to give it up. It went off." Mark's face was pale in memory, white and deeply shadowed in the sharp sideways illumination cast by Miles's handlight stuck to the wall. "I meant it to go off."

Ivan's brows rose, but Miles ruthlessly did not pause to fill him in. "Unpremeditated, perhaps," suggested Miles.

Mark shrugged.

"If you were free . . ." began Miles slowly.

Mark's lips rippled. "Free? Me? What chance? The police will have found the body by now."

"No. The tide was up over the rail. The sea has taken it. Might be three, four days before it surfaces again. If it surfaces again." And a repellent object it would be by then. Would Captain Galeni wish to reclaim it, have it properly buried? Where was Galeni? "Suppose you were free. Free of Barrayar and Komarr, free of me too. Free of Galen and the police. Free of obsession. What would you choose? Who are you? Or are you only reaction, never action?"

Mark twitched visibly. "Suck slime."

One corner of Miles's mouth curved up. He scuffed his boot through the gook on the floor, stopped himself before he began doodling with his toe. "I don't suppose you'll ever know as long as I'm standing over you."

Mark spat the dregs of his hatred. "You're the free one!"

"Me?" Miles was almost genuinely startled. "I'll never be as free as you are right now. You were yoked to Galen by fear. His control only equalled his reach, and both were broken together. I'm yoked by—other things. Waking or sleeping, near or far, makes no difference. Yet . . . Barrayar can be an interesting place, seen through other eyes than Galen's. The man's own son saw the possibilities."

Mark smirked sourly, staring at the wall. "You making another play for my body?"