Miles replied carefully, "It is ImpSec's explicit task to guard the Barrayaran Imperium. That includes not only protecting Gregor's person, and running a certain amount of galactic espionage"—a wave of his hand included the Dendarii fleet, and Illyan's far-flung, if thinly stretched, network of agents, military attachés, and informants—"but also keeping watch over Gregor's immediate heirs. Keeping watch not only to protect them, but to protect the Imperium from any little plot got up by them, or by others seeking to use them. I am acutely conscious that the question of just who is Gregor's heir is rather tangled at present. I wish to hell he'd marry and get us all off the hook soon." Miles hesitated for a long moment. "By one interpretation, Lord Mark Pierre Vorkosigan has a place as heir-claimant to the Barrayaran Imperium second only to my own. That makes him not only ImpSec's business, it makes him our primary business. My personal pursuit of the Ariel is fully justified."

"Justifiable," Quinn corrected dryly.

"Whatever."

"If Barrayar—as you have often claimed—would not accept you as emperor because of suspicion of mutation, I should think it'd go into spasms at the thought of your clone installed in the Imperial Residence," said Baz. "Twin brother," he amended hastily as Miles opened his mouth.

"It doesn't require the probability of success at gaining the Imperium to make the possibility of an attempt to do so into an ImpSec problem." Miles snorted. "It's funny. All the time the Komarrans thought of their faux-Miles as an imposter-claimant. I don't think either they or Mark realized they'd made a real claimant. Well, I'd have to be dead first anyway, so from my point of view the question is moot." He rapped the table and rose. "Let's get moving, people."

On the way out the door, Elena lowered her voice to ask him, "Miles—did your mother see those horrific investigation-reports of Illyan's about Mark, too?"

He smiled bleakly. "Who d'you think ordered them made?"

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

He began donning the half-armor. First, next to his skin, a piece of the hottest new technology on the market: a nerve-disruptor shield-net. The field-generating net was worked into the fabric of a close-fitting gray bodysuit and a hood that protected skull, neck, and forehead, leaving only his eyes, nose, and mouth peeping from the hole. And so the threat of one of the most fearsome antipersonnel weapons, the brain-killing nerve disruptor, was rendered null. As an added bonus, the suit stopped stunner fire, too. Trust Naismith to have the best and newest, and custom-made to fit . . .  was the elastic fabric supposed to be this bloody tight?