"So, Lord Mark." Gregor studied him gravely. "It seems your mother wants me to give you enough rope to hang yourself."

Mark swallowed. "Yes, Sire."

"Or save yourself . . ." Gregor nodded. "So be it. Good luck and good hunting."

"Thank you, Sire."

Gregor smiled and cut the comm.

They did not hear from Illyan again.

In the afternoon, the Countess took Mark with her to the Imperial Military Hospital on her daily visit to her husband. Mark had made that journey in her company twice before, since the Count's collapse. He didn't much care for it. For one thing, the place smelled entirely too much like the clinics that had helped make a torment of his Jacksonian youth; he found himself remembering details of early surgeries and treatments that he thought he'd altogether forgotten. For another, the Count himself still terrified Mark. Even laid low, his personality was as powerful as his life was precarious, and Mark wasn't sure which teetering aspect scared him more.

His feet slowed to a halt in the hospital corridor outside the Prime Minister's guarded room, and he stood in indecisive misery. The Countess glanced back, and stopped. "Yes?"

"I . . . really don't want to go in there."

She frowned thoughtfully. "I won't force you. But I'll predict you a prediction."

"Say on, oh seeress."

"You will never regret having done so. But you may deeply regret not having done so."

Mark digested that. "All right," he said faintly, and followed her.

They tiptoed in quietly on the deep carpeting. The drapes were open on a wide view of the Vorbarr Sultana city-scape, sweeping down to the ancient buildings and the river that bisected the capital's heart. It was a cloudy, chilly, rainy afternoon, and gray and white mists swirled around the tops of the highest modern towers. The Count's face was turned to the silver light. He looked abstracted, bored, and ill, his face puffy and greenish, only partly a reflection of the light and the green uniform pajamas that reminded all forcibly of his patient-status. He was peppered with monitor pads, and had an oxygen tube to his nostrils.

"Ah." His head turned at their entry, and he smiled. He keyed up a light at his bedside, which cast a warmer pool of illumination that nonetheless failed to improve his color. "Dear Captain. Mark." The Countess bent to his bedside, and they exchanged a longer-than-formal kiss. The Countess swung herself up on the end of his bed and perched there cross-legged, arranging her long skirt. Casually, she began to rub his bare feet, and he sighed contentedly.

Mark advanced to about a meter distance. "Good afternoon, sir. How are you feeling?"

"Hell of a deal, when you can't kiss your own wife without running out of breath," he complained. He lay back, panting heavily.

"They let me into the lab to see your new heart," the Countess commented. "It's chicken-heart sized already, and beating away cheerfully in its little vat."