"Well now I'm curious."

"So, when I was younger and more reckless than I am now, my cousin Ivan and I had this game we'd play where we'd take a lightflyer out to this long twisty gorge near my family's house in the mountains, and we'd take turns flying down it as terrifyingly fast as we could manage. Pilot wins if copilot throws up or announces his surrender; copilot wins if he makes it through the whole flight without doing either. Being the kind of person I am, I took the flyer out to the gorge without him and flew that run over and over until I could do the whole thing at top speed with my eyes closed, by sound and muscle memory and the pressure of the wind. The next time we played was also the last. Needless to say, I won."

She stares at him. She calculates the top speed of light flyers; faster than speeders, certainly. She contemplates how twisty gorges can get and how wind conditions change so much. That. Is not a stunt she would do, Sith Lord that can fight while utterly blind that she is.

"You -" she begins, and then stops, and shakes her head. "Yes. Yes I think that would cement a victory."

"'Win right' is more important than 'win hard' but when I can, I like to do both."

"Ah," she murmurs, softly.

Very abruptly, she makes a decision.

"An admirable policy that I believe, in this case, I will mirror. However, I admit I am hindered by being unfamiliar with certain aspects of Barrayaran culture," says Callida, straightening up slightly. "You see, I have little to no idea of how courtship works on Barrayar, which rather makes it hard to win right and win hard when one would like to court a Barrayaran."

...he blinks.

He smiles.

"Depends which Barrayaran you'd like to court."

"You may have three guesses as to his identity, and if that isn't enough, I can be persuaded to take pity on you and just give you the answer."

"You know, I can't believe I didn't notice we've been flirting this whole time."

... Callida snorts with laughter.

"What," she laughs, "did that business about 'place in my heart' not tip you off?"

"I was caught up in the moment! I noticed but I didn't notice, if that makes any sense, which I suspect it does not?"

Now he has subjected his favorite Sith Lord to the indignity of giggling. She hopes he's proud of himself.

"Well, I hope you are now enlightened."

"Consider me informed!"

She shakes her head, amused. ... And then a thought occurs to her, and her smile fades, slightly.

"You realize that most people would react with dawning horror at the idea of having unknowingly flirted with a Sith Lord. If you would prefer me to - back off..."

"Not at all," he assures her. "I'm not horrified, I'm delighted."

"All right. So long as you know that I will always offer an exit should you want it, I am elated by your delight."

"My favourite Sith Lord would do no less."

"... Nariveth."

"Hmm?"

"Ah, my - my name. 'Lord Callida' is a Sith title. I don't hate it or anything, but. It did sort of always bother me a little that ultimately one of the things the Sith took from me was my name. ... Don't say it in front of anyone in my fleet, please, or Occlus, it. Is sort of equivalent to implying I am not a Sith Lord, which is an insult."

"Ah," he says. "Yeah. I'd picked up on a sense that the Sith titles were - well, titles more than names - you may have noticed I say 'my favourite Sith Lord' a lot, it's partly because because 'Lord Callida' felt distancing but asking you if you had another name would've felt incredibly presumptuous..."

"Quite." Pause, smile. "And here I was, thinking that it was because the phrase amused me."

"That was definitely also a factor."

She snorts.

"Of course it was."

"Anyway. We were discussing Barrayaran courtship customs."

He considers for a moment.

"...So, to oversimplify a bit: there's the casual-liaisons kind of courtship, which I sense this is not, and the eventual-marriage kind of courtship, which—do I have to explain marriage as a concept, because if so I'm going to need a minute to think and/or call my mother, she's much better than I am at deconstructing fundamental cultural assumptions—"

"Marriage as my culture understands it is a legal and social bond between two people, promising a compatibility in lifestyles and goals, and at least a nominal mutual infatuation. Does that approximately match up?"