After a dozen off-world trips in m’lord’s wake, Roic was getting practiced at the scramble to arrange m’lord’s luggage, in his role of sometime-batman, m’lord’s and his own travel documents, in his role as personal assistant—the job title Roic traveled under, as explaining the ancient and honorable rank of Armsman to galactics was always a losing game—and m’lord’s security. And—though m’lord almost never discussed this aloud—private medtech for m’lord’s lingering health issues.

The competent Vorkosigan House staff, under the even more competent supervision of Lady Ekaterin Vorkosigan, had actually relieved him of the first of these tasks. Canceling his own affairs had cost more of a pang, as he’d just worked up the courage to invite Miss Pym down to Hassadar to meet his parents for the first time. But as an armsman’s child, Aurie had understood perfectly. Courting his commander’s daughter had been an oblique process this past year, rather like those Earth insects Lady Vorkosigan had described, where the male approached with painful caution lest he be mistaken for a meal by his intended. But it was Armsman-commander Pym who would tear off Roic’s head and eat it if he made a mis-step.

Still, in less than a day they’d boarded the shuttle for orbital transfer to the jumpship, and began three boring, if comfortable, weeks of travel to New Hope II, or Kibou-daini as it was called by the locals to distinguish it from two other planets and a transfer station of the same name in the wormhole nexus. Kibou for short, thankfully. M’lord, accustomed from his old days in Imperial Security not to waste travel time, had handed Roic quantities of homework about their destination, and himself plunged into even larger and more classified reports.

Roic himself couldn’t figure this gig out. Granted, Lord Vorkosigan was the only person Roic knew who had actually died and been cryo-revived, making him the hands-on expert in the subject among Gregor’s Auditors, the Emperor’s personal stable of troubleshooters.