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grabbed his hand rather abruptly, and Roic made a small choked noise. Miles had the sense of having
swum inside a giant beehive, for the rest of the wall was lined with hexagonal cells like a silver-edged
honeycomb filled with rainbow jewels. As they floated out toward the middle the cells resolved into
velvet-lined boxes for the audience, varying in size from cozy niches for one patron to units spacious
enough for parties of ten, if the ten were quaddies, not trailing long useless legs. Other sectors,
interspersed, seemed to be dark, flat panels of various shapes, or to contain other exits. He tried at first
to impose a sense of up and down upon the space, but then he blinked, and the chamber seemed to
rotate around the window, and then he wasn't sure if he was looking up, down, or sideways through it.
Down was a particularly disturbing mental construction, as it gave the dizzy impression of falling into a
vast well of stars.
A quaddie usher wearing an air-jet belt took them in tow, after they had gawked their fill, and steered
them gently wall-ward to their assigned hexagon. It was lined with some dark, soft, sound-baffling
padding and convenient handgrips, and included its own lighting, the colored jewels seen from afar.
A dark shape and a gleam of motion in their generously sized box resolved itself, as they approached, as
a quaddie woman. She was slim and long-limbed, with fine white-blond hair cut finger length and waving
in an aureole around her head. It made Miles think of mermaids of legend. Cheekbones to inspire men to
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duel with each other, or perhaps scribble bad poetry, or drown in drink. Or worse, desert their brigade.
She was clothed in close-fitting black velvet with a little white lace ruff at her throat. The cuff on the lower
right elbow of her softly pleated black velvet pants . . . sleeve, Miles decided, not leg, had been left
unfastened to make room for a medical air-filled arm immobilizer of a sort painfully familiar to Miles from
his fragile-boned youth. It was the only stiff, ungraceful thing about her, a crude insult to the rest of the
ensemble.
No mistaking her for anyone other than Garnet Five, but he waited for Bel to introduce them all
properly, which Bel promptly did. They shook hands all around; Miles found her grip athlete-firm.
"Thank you for obtaining these "seats did not apply, "this space for us on such short notice," Miles
said, releasing her slim upper hand. "I understand we are to be privileged to view some very fine work."
Work was a word with extra resonance in Quaddiespace, he had already gathered, likehonor on
Barrayar.
"My pleasure, Lord Vorkosigan." Her voice was melodious; her expression seemed cool, almost ironic,
but an underlying anxiety glowed in her leaf-green eyes.
Miles opened his hand to indicate her broken lower right arm. "May I convey my personal apologies for
the poor behavior of some of our men. They will be disciplined for it, when we get them back. Please do
not judge all Barrayarans by our worst examples."Well, she can't; we actually don't ship out our
worst, Gregor be praised.
She smiled briefly. "I do not, for I've also met your best." The urgency in her eyes tinged her voice.
"Dmitri what will happen to him?"
"Well, that depends to a great extent on Dmitri." Pitches, Miles suddenly realized, could run two ways,
here. "It could range, when he is released and returns to duty, from a minor black mark on his
record he wasn't supposed to remove his wrist com while on station leave, you know, for just the sort
of reason you unfortunately discovered to a very serious charge of attempted desertion, if he fails to
withdraw his request for political asylum before it is denied."
Her jaw set a trifle. "Perhaps it won't be denied."
"Even if granted, the long-term consequences could be more complex than you perhaps anticipate. He
would at that point be plainly guilty of desertion. He would be permanently exiled from his home, never
able to return or see his family. Barrayar might seem a world well lost now, in the first flush of . . .
emotion, but I think I'm sure it's something he could come to deeply regret later." He thought of
melancholy Baz Jesek, exiled for years over an even more badly managed conflict. "There are other, if
less speedy, ways Ensign Corbeau might yet end up back here, if his desire to do so is true will and not
temporary whim. It would take a little more time, but be infinitely less damaging he's playing for the rest
of his life with this, after all."
She frowned. "Won't the Barrayaran military have him shot, or horribly butchered, or or
assassinated?"
"We are not at war with the Union."Yet, anyway . It would take more heroic blundering than this to
make that happen, but he ought not to underestimate his fellow Barrayarans, he supposed. And he didn't
think Corbeau was politically important enough to assassinate.So let's try to make sure he doesn't
become so, eh? "He wouldn't be executed. But twenty years in jail is hardly better, from your point of
view. You don't serve himor yourself by encouraging him to this desertion. Let him return to duty, serve
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