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"Naw," Nikki muttered, wrapping his arms around his knees and staring down at his shoes rubbing on the fine yellow silk upholstery.

"Are you afraid it might be true?"

"It could not be," said Ekaterin fiercely. "It was physically impossible."

Nikki looked up. "But he was in ImpSec, Mama! ImpSec agents can do anything, and make it look like anything!"

"Thank you for that . . . vote of confidence, Nikki," said Miles gravely. "I think. In fact, Ekaterin, Nikki's right. I can imagine several plausible scenarios that could have resulted in the physical evidence you saw."

"Name one," she said scornfully.

"Most simply, I might have had an unknown accomplice." Rather horribly, his fingers made a tiny twisting gesture, as of someone venting a bound man's oxygen supply. Nikki of course missed both the gesture and the reference. "It elaborates from there. If I can generate them, so can others, and I'm sure some won't hesitate to share their bright ideas with you."

"You foresaw this?" she asked, a little numb.

"Ten years in ImpSec does things to your brain. Some of them aren't very nice."

The tidal wave of anger that had hurled her here was receding, leaving her standing on a very bare shore indeed. She had not intended to talk so frankly in front of Nikki. But Vormoncrief had destroyed any chance of continuing to protect him by ignorance. Maybe Miles was right. They were going to have to deal with this. All three of them were going to have to deal, and go on dealing, ready or not, old enough or not.

"Shuffling facts only takes you so far anyway. Sooner or later, you come down to bare trust. Or mistrust." He turned to Nikki, his eyes unreadable. "Here's the truth. Nikki, I did not murder your father. He went out-dome with a breath mask with nearly empty reservoirs, which he did not check, and then got caught outside too long. I made two bad mistakes that prevented me from being able to save him. I don't feel very good about that, but I can't fix it now. The only thing I can do to make up for it is to take care of—" He stopped abruptly, and eyed Ekaterin with extreme wariness. "To see that his family is taken care of, and doesn't lack for any need."

She eyed him back. His family had been Tien's least concern, judging by his performance while he was alive, or else he would not have left her destitute, himself secretly dishonored, and Nikki untreated for a serious genetic disease. Yet Tien's larger failures, time bombs though they'd been for Nikki's future, had seldom impinged on the young boy. In a pensive moment during the funeral she had asked Nikki what one of his happy memories of his da was. He'd remembered Tien taking them for a wonderful week at the seaside. Ekaterin, recalling that the monorail tickets and reservations for that holiday had been slipped to her as a charity by her brother Hugo, had kept silent. Even from the grave, she thought bitterly, Tien's personal chaos still reached out to disrupt her grasp for peace. Maybe Vorkosigan's bid to shoulder responsibility was not a bad thing for Nikki to hear.

Nikki's lips were tight, and his eyes a little blurry, as he digested Miles's blunt words. "But," he began, and stalled.

"You must be starting to think of a lot of questions," Miles said in a tone of mild encouragement. "What are some of them? Or even just one or two of them?"

Nikki looked down, then up. "But—but—why didn't he check his breath mask?" He hesitated, then went on in a rush, "Why couldn't you share yours? What were your two mistakes? What did you lie to Mama about that got her so mad? Why couldn't you save him? How did your wrists get all chewed up?" Nikki took a deep breath, gave Miles an utterly daunted look, and almost wailed, "Am I supposed to kill you like Captain Vortalon?"

Miles had been following this spate with close attention, but at this last he looked taken aback. "Excuse me. Who?"

Ekaterin, flummoxed, supplied in an undervoice, "Captain Vortalon is Nikki's favorite holovid hero. He's a jump pilot