Mark glanced back, and collided with the Count's deeply questioning stare. It was a thousand times worse than even the Dendarii's I-love-Naismith look. He clenched his hands to his head, and grated, "Miles isn't in here!"

"I know," said the Count quietly. "I was looking for . . . myself, I suppose. And Cordelia. And you."

Uncomfortably compelled, Mark looked for himself in the Count, reciprocally. He wasn't sure. Hair color, formerly; he and Miles shared the same dark hair he had seen on vids of the younger Admiral Vorkosigan. Intellectually, he'd known Aral Vorkosigan was the old General Count Piotr Vorkosigan's younger son, but that lost older brother had been dead for sixty years. He was astonished the present Count remembered with such immediacy, or made of it a connection with himself. Strange, and frightening. I was to kill this man. I still could. He's not guarding himself at all.

"Your ImpSec people didn't even fast-penta me. Aren't you at all worried that I might still be programmed to assassinate you?" Or did he seem so little threat?

"I thought you shot your father-figure once already. Catharsis enough." A bemused grimace curved the Count's mouth.

Mark remembered Galen's surprised look, when the nerve-disruptor beam had taken him full in the face. Whatever Aral Vorkosigan would look like, dying, Mark fancied it would not be surprised.

"You saved Miles's life then, according to his description of the affray," the Count said. "You chose your side two years ago, on Earth. Very effectively. I have many fears for you, Mark, but my death at your hand is not one of them. You're not as one-down with respect to your brother as you imagine. Even-all, by my count."

"Progenitor. Not brother," said Mark, stiff and congealed.

"Cordelia and I are your progenitors," said the Count firmly.

Denial flashed in Mark's face.

The Count shrugged. "Whatever Miles is, we made him. You are perhaps wise to approach us with caution. We may not be good for you, either."

His belly shivered with a terrible longing, restrained by a terrible fear. Progenitors. Parents. He was not sure he wanted parents, at this late date. They were such enormous figures. He felt obliterated in their shadow, shattered like glass, annihilated. He felt a sudden weird wish to have Miles back. Somebody his own size and age, somebody he could talk to.

The Count glanced again into the bedchamber. "Pym should have arranged your things."

"I don't have any things. Just the clothes I'm wearing . . . sir." It was impossible to keep his tongue from adding that honorific.

"You must have had something more to wear!"

"What I brought from Earth, I left in a storage locker on Escobar. The rent's up by now. It's probably confiscated."