He let himself through and closed the doors again. Mark's throat locked; he swallowed and breathed, swallowed and breathed, with frighteningly fragile control. He would not pass out in front of this man. Or vomit. He hadn't more than a teaspoon of bile left in his belly by now anyway. It was him, unmistakably him, Prime Minister Admiral Count Aral Vorkosigan, formerly Regent of the Barrayaran Empire and de facto dictator of three worlds, conqueror of Komarr, military genius, political mastermind—accused murderer, torturer, madman, too many impossible things to be contained in that stocky form now striding toward Mark.

Mark had studied vids of him taken at every age; perhaps it was not so odd that his first coherent thought was, He looks older than I expected. Count Vorkosigan was ten standard years older than his Betan wife, but he looked twenty or thirty years older. His hair was a whiter shade of gray than in the vids from even two years ago. He was short for a Barrayaran, eye to eye with the Countess. His face was heavy, intense, weathered. He wore green uniform trousers but no jacket, just the cream shirt with the long sleeves rolled up and open at the round collar which, if it was an attempt at a casual look, was failing utterly. The tension in the room had risen to choking levels with his entrance.

"Elena is settled," Count Vorkosigan reported, seating himself beside the Countess. His posture was open, hands on knees, but he did not lean back comfortably. "The visit seems to be stirring up more old memories than she was ready for. She's rather disturbed."

"I'll go talk to her in a bit," promised the Countess.

"Good." The Count's eyes inventoried Mark. Puzzled? Repelled? "Well." The practiced diplomat whose job it was to talk three planets down the road to progress sat speechless, at a loss, as if unable to address Mark directly. He turned instead to his wife. "He passed as Miles?"

A tinge of dark amusement flashed in Countess Vorkosigan's eyes. "He's put on weight since then," she said blandly.

"I see."

The silence stretched for excruciating seconds.

Mark blurted out, "The first thing I was supposed to do when I met you was try to kill you."

"Yes. I know." Count Vorkosigan settled back on the sofa, eyes on Mark's face at last.

"They made me practice about twenty different back-up methods, till I could do them in my sleep, but the primary was to have been a skin patch with a paralyzing toxin that left evidence on autopsy pointing to heart failure. I was to get alone with you, touch it to any part of your body I could reach. It was strangely slow, for an assassination drug. I was to wait, in your sight, for twenty minutes while you died, and never let on that I was not Miles."

The Count smiled grimly. "I see. A good revenge. Very artistic. It would have worked."