Miles's belly went cold. So that's what my intuition demon wanted me to know. Or not to know. He had known all kinds of genuine psychopaths and sadists: Bothari, Cavilo, Ryoval. To a lesser extent, Mark. But the twins, he sensed, were of a different magnitude altogether. Raina-and-Alex. He'd guessed right, the first time. He imagined he could hear the snap of the little animal's spine, the servant's wide-eyed stare.

"So they had us tested again," Raina continued. "This time against genetic samples from Mad Yuri. It was the luck of the draw, really, that both of us inherited the rare syndrome now named after him. Out of all his scattered descendants, even with our father's Betan genes and our mother's clean Vor lineage."

"And a greater irony that both our parents had well-founded fears about genetic abnormalities," Alex said, looking at Miles and Ekaterin. Miles felt her shrink beneath his gaze. "For seven years, there was no effective treatment."

"When they did come up with it, it only half-worked. We were still very far from sanity. At eleven years old, we were big for our age; we could pass for young teenagers. We knew weapons, tactics, at least a dozen ways to kill a person. And we knew we didn't fit in.

"So we ran away. We evaded ImpSec for three months in the Hub, during which we came very close to killing some of their operatives. After our capture, Dad came out to see us. We made a deal with him. We were to stay with the Dendarii Mercenaries, earn our keep, study hard, and get back in time for Alex to take the Academy entrance exams."

"At eleven years old?!" Ivan burst out.

Raina grimaced, annoyed at the interruption. Miles was glad of it; he needed a little reality, right now. "You must understand, our minds were nothing like normal children's. We had an instinct for killing. We liked it."

Do you, still?

"Better to kill an established enemy than a possible friend. Or a relative. That even outweighed Father's legitimate fears of losing his only male heir."

"We were so good at it," said Alex, "that we became known for it. Oh, we gave Quinnie the chills, all right. When we turned sixteen, she told Dad she was turning us loose, since we were ruining the whole outfit. She certainly had enough evidence to convince him."

"When we went rogue," Raina said, "we sealed our reputations. Assassins for hire, deep cover moles, space tactics, ground tactics. About a dozen quick, pinpoint jobs, spectacular success rates. Things got pretty crazy, even for us, but we had each other." At that, she and Alex exchanged an odd, quick look. "Towards the end of our run, four months shy of our seventeenth birthday, we called Father, told him we were still alive and planning on redeeming our word. Then we ended up in Cetagandan space. Two weeks later, we were inside the Star Crèche on Eta Ceta IV."

Miles gaped. Inside the Star Crèche? How had they managed that? Granted, he'd pulled that off, but when he was shy of twenty-three, not seventeen. He tried to remind himself, firmly, just exactly what one could accomplish at age seventeen.

Alex said, "We were there to call in an old family debt with the Empress the haut Rian Degtiar. After five years of combing every medical facility in two Sectors, we'd heard the same thing: only the Cetagandans can cure you."

Raina continued, "While she was working on the problem, she put us under the protection of her son, the haut Sebastian Giaja." Ah, at last. "Against my better judgment, and I suspect, his, Sebastian and I had an intense sexual affair. Even by my standards."

Miles sat up in rigid shock. Raina had said it quite plainly, without any sarcasm or pride or cruel delight. Yet the implications were astounding. Haut never coupled below their class unless the Star Crèche willed it, and certainly never with outlanders. This woman had a lot of practice, oh yes. Even Ivan seemed to forget his 'manhandling' and looked rather... impressed.

"Then two things happened, without which we wouldn't even be here in this current mess. First, Sebastian started getting curious about the Star Crèche, since we had unprecedented access to it. He dug around. He learned the shocking news that as a result of an elaborate plot against his mother, he was not genetically haut.

"Then the second thing happened. Or rather, I let it happen. I was young and stupid and I didn't want to admit it, and I had my contraceptive implant removed. I got pregnant."

Raina made no attempt to conceal the bitterness now. "Alex and I got the treatments, we were ready to go, but Sebastian wouldn't let us leave. I didn't know if he still loved me, or if he wanted to keep the secret on-planet. It's a small thing, to kill two nosy Barrayarans, especially in the middle of the forbidden Celestial Garden. By then the baby was in a replicator. I thought we could escape with it."

Alex squeezed her hand. She was barely in control, her face tight and closed, her voice barely a whisper. "He killed it. Dumped it. He said it was a mistake, a blot on the haut genome. I told him he wasn't haut. Then I told everyone he wasn't haut. It ruined him, but for our trouble, we got off-planet."

Alex said, "They banished him from the caste, for his 'impurity.' He was less than a ba, more than a ghem. No one would take him."

"Despite setbacks," said Raina, more evenly now, "he spent years cultivating ties among the ghem. He used them to engineer the Imperial War--- the last war between the Barrayaran Imperium and the Cetagandan Empire. By then I was an officer, a lieutenant. We had so many losses, at first, that I became a brevet captain, and then a real captain, in the first six months. They raised me to my present rank when I helped win the battle that turned the tide in our favor.

"You can guess the rest of the story. I went home, war-weary, tired of everything." Strangely, Alex's expression frayed at this point, though Raina remained impassive. "On leave I met a childhood friend of mine, Crown Prince Leo Vorbarra. Inexplicably, we fell in love, got married, and I started living a normal life." She fingered her wedding ring. "After the war, we received reports that Sebastian Giaja, former crown prince, was a carbonized corpse floating somewhere in the Hub.

"In my humble opinion," she said, smiling suddenly, coldly, "Sebastian should have stayed dead."