I am poured out like water . . . where did that quote come from? It sounded like something of the Countess's. "He's still up. Please. Sire. And have him call me back at this console to confirm. I'll wait."

"Very well," Gregor's lips twisted up in a peculiar smile, "Lord Mark."

"Thank you, sire. Uh . . . good night."

"Good morning." Gregor cut the comm.

Mark waited. The seconds ticked by, stretched out of all recognition. His hangover was starting, but he was still slightly drunk. The worst of both worlds. He had started to doze when the comconsole chimed at last, and he nearly spasmed out of his chair.

He slapped urgently at the controls. "Yes. Sir?"

Illyan's saturnine face appeared over the vid plate. "Lord Mark." He gave Mark the barest nod. "If you come to ImpSec headquarters at the beginning of normal business hours tomorrow morning, you will be permitted to review the files we discussed."

"Thank you, sir," said Mark sincerely.

"That's two-and-one-half hours from now," Illyan mentioned with, Mark thought, an understandable hint of sadism. Illyan hadn't slept either.

"I'll be there."

Illyan acknowledged this with a shiver of his eyelids, and vanished.

Damnation through good works, or grace alone? Mark meditated on Gregor's grace. He knew. He knew it before I did. Lord Mark Vorkosigan was a real person.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The level light of dawn turned the night's lingering mist to gold, a smoky autumnal haze that gave the city of Vorbarr Sultana an almost magical air. The Imperial Security Headquarters building stood windowless, foursquare against the light, a vast utilitarian concrete block with enormous gates and doors certainly designed to diminish any human supplicant fool enough to approach it. In his case, a redundant effect, Mark decided.

"What awful architecture," he said to Pym, beside him, chauffeuring him in the Count's groundcar.

"Ugliest building in town," the armsman agreed cheerfully. "It dates back to Mad Emperor Yuri's Imperial architect, Lord Dono Vorrutyer. An uncle to the later vice-admiral. He managed to get up five major structures before Yuri was killed, and they stopped him. The Municipal Stadium runs this a close second, but we've never been able to afford to tear it down. Still stuck with it, sixty years later."

"It looks like the sort of place that has dungeons in the basement. Painted institutional green. Run by ethics-free physicians."

"It did," said Pym. The armsman negotiated their way past the gate guards and slowed in front of a vast flight of steps.

"Pym . . . aren't those steps a bit oversized?"

"Yep," grinned the armsman. "You'd have a cramp in your leg by the time you reached the top, if you tried to take it in one go." Pym eased the groundcar forward and stopped to let Mark off. "But if you go around the left end, here, you'll find a little door at ground level, and a lift tube foyer. That's where everybody actually goes in."