After a few seconds, and a glance around to verify that she and the two at the bar are the only people in the room, she lowers her hands and finds her voice.

"Aral?!" she hisses incredulously. "What are you doing here?"

...he looks up from his milkshake and turns around.

"I'm - not here - or rather, you're not there - we've encountered some kind of temporospatial anomaly which I'm sure you'll find fascinating—"

"Just tell me I can use it to escape my therapist and I don't care if we've encountered the place wormholes go when they want a drink."

He shakes his head and laughs softly. "Yes, you certainly can do that, at least if you find my father's house on Barrayar an acceptable alternative."

"As it happens, that's exactly where I was headed, so thank you for saving me the trip. I was about to land some innocent cargo pilot in a bit of trouble."

Awww.

"...And why are you in the process of doing to Beta Colony what you did to the General Vorkraft?"

"Oh, no, I was much nicer when I escaped the General Vorkraft," she says.

He blinks, absorbing this comparison.

"Have you killed anyone...?"

"No," she says, eventually.

"...I'm sorry."

She drags the hat off her head and shakes out her hair with a weary little laugh. "Anyway, enough of Beta Colony, I'm thoroughly done with the place. I take it your offer is still open?"

"It is."

"Then I happily accept."

She pauses.

"...Who's this, anyway?"

"Oh. This is Cam. Cam, this is Cordelia Naismith, my... former prisoner."

"Uh, charmed."

"Pleased to meet you," says Cordelia. "I suppose you're not actually a wormhole. And if Aral called me his 'former prisoner' as though that qualified as an explanation, you must have been talking a while."

"Not that long but he did mention you."

"How did I manage to come up so fast?"

"He was explaining why he's been here for a week and has kept asking the bar for maple mead."

...She looks at Aral.

"...I haven't been doing so well," he admits.

"And yet that doesn't look much like a vehicle for ethanol intoxication," she says, nodding at Aral's milkshake.

"The bar is concerned for my health. She reminds me a little of you, actually."

"Oh! Have I been ignoring a participant in this conversation all this time?"