"Oh, I will." Miles took another sip, and another.

"Only two breaks in three years," Ivan rambled on between bites. "I might as well be a condemned prisoner. No wonder they call it service. Servitude is more like it." Another gulp, to wash down a meat-stuffed pastry. "But your time is all your own—you can do whatever you want with it."

"Every minute," agreed Miles blandly. Neither the Emperor nor anyone else demanded his service. He couldn't sell it—couldn't give it away …

Ivan, blessedly, fell silent for a few minutes, refueling. After a time he said hesitantly. "No chance of your father coming up here, is there?"

Miles jerked his chin up. "What, you're not afraid of him, are you?"

Ivan snorted. "The man turns entire General Staffs to pudding, for God's sake. I'm just the Emperor's rawest recruit. Doesn't he terrify you?"

Miles considered the question seriously. "Not exactly, no. Not in the way you mean."

Ivan rolled his eyes heavenward in disbelief.

"Actually," added Miles, thinking back to the recent scene in the library, "if you're trying to duck him this might not be the best place, tonight."

"Oh?" Ivan swirled his wine in the bottom of his cup. "I've always had the feeling he doesn't like me," he added glumly.

"Oh, he doesn't mind you," said Miles, taking pity. "At least as you appear on his horizon at all. Although I think I was fourteen before I found out that Ivan wasn't your middle name." Miles cut himself off. That-idiot Ivan was beginning a lifetime of Imperial service tomorrow. Lucky-Miles was emphatically not. He took another gulp of wine, and longed for sleep. They finished the canapes, and Ivan emptied the first bottle and opened the second.