"Or collect suggestions. God knows who from."

"Yes, you do seem to bring that out in him."

"Perhaps he'll get used to me eventually." She looks up at the light fixture. "Unless of course we are all shot the next time the door opens."

"Unless that," agrees Miles. "But they'd have trouble hauling all the bodies away. Except mine - I'm nice and light."

"Come to think of it Mark was heavier. Not outside normal range, but heavier."

"Point in favour of my bones theory."

"It is. That one probably wasn't fragile. I just don't see why they couldn't have made an arbitrary number, to swap in depending on what kind of scrutiny they expected or what, exactly, they were trying to do."

"Cost. I've been to Jackson's Whole. Producing one accelerated clone is fucking expensive, beyond most people's means. Producing ten, beyond all but the richest. Producing fifty - at that point they might as well just buy several mercenary armies and wage open war. I might grant that they could have two, if they desperately wanted to, but they could only send one to Barrayar in my place - any theory that assumes they have the means to send both strongly implies they also have the means to swap them in for me without waiting for me to fall into their collective lap on Earth."

He nods, semi-happily.

"How much of a disaster is this going to be with Captain Illyan?" she wonders. "The having told me, I mean, rather than concocting an elaborate story that retained separation between you and Naismith."

"At this point I'm inclined to say that if Illyan feels like complaining about my choices he can bugger himself," says Miles. "With a plasma arc. I suppose it's possible he might fire me, but if we all get out of this alive I very much doubt it."

"What would you have done if you'd tried to sell me the story and I hadn't gotten the job bid? ...For that matter, did you wind up having to write your mother in case I did the same? I didn't, as it happens, but..."

"Of course I wrote my mother. I - don't know what I would have done. Tried harder, probably."

"I confess it's rather alarming that you were that good at lying to my face, even if I already had fair warning that you'd try it if you had to. Didn't even have the - flinch."

Miles glances at Galeni, and says, "I've recently been given cause to wonder whether I might have been getting a little too into the Naismith persona. I - when you picked me up, it didn't occur to me that I had a wife who did that occasionally until I turned around."

"And then I caught up with myself and spent the rest of that conversation internally screaming, but God knows incredible stress is practically Admiral Naismith's optimal working condition."

"The Dendarii have been in operation for a - a while. Since before I met you."

"Yeah. Admiral Naismith, uh, has never dated, if that's what you're asking. Too busy getting shot at, and then - well, I remember I'm married when people flirt with me."

"I picked Mark up, I kissed him on the forehead, I put him down, he shot me," she adds. "If you were wondering."