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Dubauer stared at Miles. Its lips parted in momentary bewilderment, then made a small circle, Oh. "I believe you two gentlepersons saved my life. I . . . I'm afraid I didn't see anything. Until that thing—what was it?—hit me."

Miles bent and picked up a loose rivet, one of hundreds, now cooled. "One of these. Have you stopped bleeding?"

The herm pulled the pad away from its cheek. "Yes, I think so."

"Here, keep it for a souvenir." He held out the gleaming brass slug. "Trade you for my handkerchief back." Ekaterin had embroidered it by hand, for a present.

"Oh—" Dubauer folded the pad over the bloodstain. "Oh, dear. Is it of value? I'll have it cleaned, and return it to you."

"Not necessary, honorable herm. My batman takes care of such things."

The elderly Betan looked distressed. "Oh, no—"

Miles ended the argument by reaching over and plucking the fine cloth from the clutching fingers, and stuffing it back in his pocket. The herm's hand jerked after it, and fell back. Miles had met diffident people, but never before one who apologized for bleeding. Dubauer, unused to personal violence on low-crime Beta Colony, was on the edge of distraught.

A quaddie security patrolwoman hovered anxiously in her floater. "What the hell happened here?" she demanded, snapping open a recorder.

Miles gestured to Bel, who took over describing the incident into the recorder. Bel was as calm, logical, and detailed as at any Dendarii debriefing, which possibly took the woman more aback than the crowd of witnesses who clustered eagerly around trying to tell the tale in more excited terms. To Miles's intense relief, no one else had been hit except for a few minor clips from ricocheting marble chips. The fellow's aim might have been imperfect, but he apparently hadn't intended a general massacre.

Good for public safety on Graf Station, but not, upon reflection, so good for Miles. . . . His children might have been orphaned, just now, before they'd even had a chance to be born. His will was spot up to date, the size of an academic dissertation complete with bibliography and footnotes. It suddenly seemed entirely inadequate to the task.

"Was the suspect a downsider or a quaddie?" the patrolwoman asked Bel urgently.

Bel shook its head. "I couldn't see the lower half of his body below the balcony rail. I'm not even sure it was male, really."

A downsider transient and the quaddie waitress who'd been serving his drink on the lounge level chimed in with the news that the assailant had been a quaddie, and had fled down an adjoining corridor in his floater. The transient was sure he'd been male, although the waitress, now that the question was raised, grew less certain. Dubauer apologized for not having glimpsed the person at all.

Miles prodded the riveter with his toe, and asked Bel in an under-voice, "How hard would it be to carry something like that through Station Security checkpoints?"

"Easy," said Bel. "No one would even blink."

"Local manufacture?" It looked quite new.

"Yes, that's a Sanctuary Station brand. They make good tools."

"First job for Venn, then. Find out where the thing was sold, and when. And who to."

"Oh, yeah."

Miles was nearly dizzy with a weird combination of delight and dismay. The delight was partly adrenaline high, a familiar and dangerous old addiction, partly the realization that having been potshotted by a quaddie gave him a stick to beat back Greenlaw's relentless attack on his Barrayaran brutality. Quaddies were killers too, hah. They just weren't as good at it. . . . He remembered Solian, and took back that thought. Yeah, and if Greenlaw didn't set me up for this herself. Now there was a nice, paranoid theory. He set it aside to reexamine when his head had cooled. After all, a couple of hundred people, both quaddies and transients—including all of the fleet's galactic passengers—must have known he'd be coming here this morning.

A quaddie medical squad arrived, and on their heels—immediately after them, Chief Venn. The security chief was instantly deluged with excited descriptions of the spectacular