"I've just spent the morning attending to Admiral Naismith's duties," the clone told him. Smugly, Miles fancied. "Your bodyguard thought she was handing me back to Barrayaran embassy security. The Barrayarans will think my Komarran guard is a Dendarii. And I win myself a little slice of unaccounted time. Neat, no?"
"Risky," remarked Miles. "What do you hope to gain that's worth it? Fast-penta doesn't exactly work on me, y'know." In fact, Miles noticed, the hypospray was nowhere in sight. Missing, like Ser Galen. Curious.
"It doesn't matter." The clone made a sharp throw-away gesture, another piece torn from Miles, twang. "I don't care if you talk truth or lies. I just want to hear you talk. To see you, just once. You, you, you—" the clone's voice dropped to a whisper, twang, "how I've come to hate you."
Miles cleared his throat again. "I might point out that, in point of fact, we met for the very first time three nights ago. Whatever was done to you was not done by me."
"You," said the clone, "screwed me over just by existing. It hurts me that you breathe." He spread a hand across his chest. "However, that will be cured very shortly. But Galen promised me an interview first." He wheeled off the desk and began to pace; Miles's feet twitched. "He promised me."
"And where is Ser Galen this morning, by the way?" Miles inquired mildly.
"Out." The clone favored him with a sour grin. "For a little slice of time."
Miles's brows rose. "This conversation is unauthorized?"
"He promised me. But then he reneged. Wouldn't say why."
"Ah—hm. Since yesterday?"
"Yes." The clone paused in his pacing to regard Miles through narrowed eyes. "Why?"
"I think it may have been something I said. Thinking out loud," Miles said. "I'm afraid I figured out one too many things about his plot. Something even you weren't supposed to know. He was afraid I'd spill it under fast-penta. That suited me. The less you were able to pump from me, the more likely you'd be to make a mistake." Miles waited, barely breathing, to see which way this bait would be taken. A whiff of the exhilarated hyperconsciousness of combat thrilled along his nerves.
"I'll bite," said the clone agreeably. His eyes gleamed, sardonic. "Spill it, then."
When he was seventeen, this clone's age, he'd been—inventing the Dendarii Mercenaries, Miles recalled. Perhaps it would be better not to underestimate him. What would it be like to be a clone? How far under the skin did their similarity end? "You're a sacrifice," Miles stated bluntly. "He does not intend for you to make it alive to the Barrayaran Imperium."
"Do you think I haven't figured that out?" the clone scoffed. "I know he doesn't think I can make it. Nobody thinks I can make it—"
Miles's breath caught as from a blow. This twang bit bone-deep.
"But I'll show them. Ser Galen," the clone's eyes glittered, "is going to be very surprised at what happens when I come to power."
"So will you," Miles predicted morosely.
"D'you think I'm stupid?" the clone demanded.
Miles shook his head. "I know exactly how stupid you are, I'm afraid."
The clone smiled tightly. "Galen and his friends spent a month farting around London, chasing you, just trying to set up for the switch. It was I who told them to have you kidnap yourself. I've studied you longer than any of them, harder than all of them. I knew you couldn't resist. I can outthink you."
Demonstrably true, alas, at least in this instance. Miles fought off a wave of despair. The kid was good, too good—he had it all, right down to the screaming tension radiating from every muscle in his body. Twang, Or was that home-grown? Could different pressures produce the same warps? What would it be like, behind those eyes . . . ?
Miles's eye fell on the Dendarii uniform. His own insignia winked back at him malevolently as the clone paced. "But you can outthink Admiral Naismith?"
The clone smiled proudly. "I got your soldiers released from jail this morning. Something you hadn't been able to do, evidently."
"Danio?" Miles croaked, fascinated. No, no, say it isn't so. …
"He's back on duty." The clone nodded incisively.
Miles suppressed a small moan.
The clone paused, glanced at Miles intently, some of his decisiveness falling away. "Speaking of Admiral Naismith—are you sleeping with that woman?"
What kind of life had this kid led? Miles wondered anew. Secret—always watched, constantly force-tutored, allowed contact with only a few selected persons—almost cloistered. Had the Komarrans thought to include that in his training, or was he a seventeen-year-old virgin? In which case he must be obsessed with sex . . . "Quinn," said Miles, "is six years older than me. Extremely experienced. And demanding. Accustomed to a high degree of finesse in her chosen partner. Are you an initiate in the variant practices of the Deeva Tau love cults as practiced on Kline Station?" A safe challenge, Miles judged, as he'd just this minute invented them. "Are you familiar with the Seven Secret Roads of Female Pleasure? After she's climaxed four or five times, though, she'll usually let you up—"
The clone circled him, looking distinctly unsettled. "You're lying. I think."
"Maybe." Miles smiled toothily, only wishing the improvised fantasy were true. "Consider what you'd risk, finding out."
The clone glowered at him. He glowered back.
"Do your bones break like mine?" Miles asked suddenly. Horrible thought. Suppose, for every blow Miles had suffered, they had broken this one's bones to match. Suppose for every miscalculated foolish risk of Miles's, the clone had paid full measure—reason indeed to hate. . . .
"No."
Miles breathed concealed relief. So, their med-sensor readings wouldn't exactly match. "It must be a short-term plot, eh?"
"I mean to be on top in six months."
"So I'd understood. And whose space fleet will bottle all the chaos on Barrayar, behind its wormhole exit, while Komarr rises again?" Miles made his voice light, trying to appear only casually interested in this vital bit of intelligence.
"We were going to call in the Cetagandans. That's been broken off."
His worst fears . . . "Broken off? I'm delighted, but why, in an escapade singularly lacking in sanity, should you have come to your senses on that one?"
"We found something better, ready to hand." The clone smirked strangely. "An independent military force, highly experienced in space blockade duties, with no unfortunate ties to other planetary neighbors who might be tempted to muscle in on the action. And personally and fiercely loyal, it appears, to my slightest whim. The Dendarii Mercenaries."
Miles tried to lunge for the clone's throat. The clone recoiled. Being still firmly tied to the chair, Miles and it toppled forward, mashing his face painfully into the carpet. "No, no, no!" he gibbered, bucking, trying to kick loose. "You moron! It'd be a slaughter—!"
The two Komarran guards tumbled through the door. "What, what happened?"
"Nothing." The clone, pale, ventured out from behind the comconsole desk where he'd retreated. "He fell over. Straighten him back, will you?"
"Fell or was pushed," muttered one of the Komarrans as the pair of them yanked the chair back upright. Miles perforce came with it. The guard stared with interest at his face. A warm wetness, rapidly cooling, trickled itchily down Miles's upper lip and three-day moustache stubble. Bloody nose? He glanced down cross-eyed, and licked at it. Calm. Calm. The clone could never get that far with the Dendarii. His future failure would be little consolation to a dead Miles, though.