He showered in the hottest water the tiny unit would yield, and stood for long minutes in the heat of the dryer-blast, till his skin flushed red, before he stopped shivering. He was dizzy with exhaustion. When he finally emerged, he found someone had been and gone and left clothes and food. He hastily pulled on underwear, a black Dendarii tee-shirt, and a pair of his progenitor's ship-knit gray trousers, and fell upon the dinner. It wasn't a dainty Naismith-special-diet this time, but rather a tray of standard ready-to-eat rations designed to keep a large and physically active trooper going strong. It was far from gourmet fare, but it was the first time he'd had enough food on his plate for weeks. He devoured it all, as if whatever fairy had delivered it might reappear and snatch it away again. Stomach aching, he rolled into bed and lay on his side. He no longer shivered as if from cold, nor felt drained and sweating and shaky from low blood sugar. Yet a kind of psychic reverberation still rolled like a black tide through his body.

At least you got the clones out. 

No. Miles got the clones out.

Dammit, dammit, dammit . . . 

This half-baked disaster was not the glorious redemption of which he'd dreamed. Yet what had he expected the aftermath to be? In all his desperate plotting, he'd planned almost nothing past his projected return to Escobar with the Ariel. To Escobar, grinning, with the clones under his wing. He'd imagined himself dealing with an enraged Miles then, but then it would have been too late for Miles to stop him, too late to take his victory from him. He'd half-expected to be arrested, but to go willingly, whistling. What had he wanted?

To be free of survivor guilt? To break that old curse? Nobody you knew back then is still alive. . . . That was the motive he'd thought was driving him, when he thought at all. Maybe it wasn't so simple. He'd wanted to free himself from something. . . . In the last two years, freed of Ser Galen and the Komarrans by the actions of Miles Vorkosigan, freed again altogether by Miles on a London street at dawn, he had not found the happiness he'd dreamed of during his slavery to the terrorists. Miles had broken only the physical chains that bound him; others, invisible, had cut so deep that flesh had grown around them.

What did you think? That if you were as heroic as Miles, they'd have to treat you like Miles? That they would have to love you? 

And who were they? The Dendarii? Miles himself? Or behind Miles, those sinister, fascinating shadows, Count and Countess Vorkosigan?