"Personally, of course, I expect you to be delicious."

"Aw, you say the nicest things."

Mark giggles.

"Do you have any interesting stories? I would assume so, with the -" handwave, "obvious training and observation skills."

"Mm. D'you want the seven-century version or the two-decade version?"

"History lesson, why not. Seven-century version."

"Right, so. After humanity discovered wormhole jump technology, we started colonizing every half-habitable rock in sight. Well and good. Then, with one of those half-habitable rocks half-colonized - a planet called Barrayar - we discovered that wormholes sometimes spontaneously collapse. Barrayar was cut off. The fifty thousand initial colonists had to make do with a partially terraformed planet and a haphazard collection of technology that they soon lost the infrastructure to maintain. Over the next six hundred years, they scraped together a more or less functional society. Then somebody found a new wormhole route to Barrayar, from a planet called Komarr. Among Komarr's other connections was the eight-planet Cetagandan Empire, which liked the look of Barrayar for a ninth. They bribed the Komarrans to let their warships through, and conquered Barrayar. Occupied them for a good twenty years before the Barrayarans threw them out with a combination of galactic aid and sheer stubbornness, whereupon the Barrayarans immediately conquered Komarr because what else are you going to fucking do."

"They weren't interested in explaining themselves. The official excuse was inappropriately ambitious generals. Inappropriate ambition did play a part, I think - you conquer the territory, maybe you get a piece, and Barrayar looked like easy pickings."

"Yeah. It was a clean job, too, hardly any casualties, right up until some bloodthirsty fuckwit on the Barrayaran side decided to kill two hundred Komarran civilians for reasons that remain lost to history because the admiral in charge personally executed him as soon as the news broke."

"You know, a few years ago I would have argued that he should have interrogated the idiot responsible for that first. But now I can't fault the person responsible and wish I'd done it with a similar situation. How badly did the backlash hit the admiral?"

Revan sighs. "Of course it didn't, because it was a stupid plan. You were the major victim of it?"

"Well, arguably. And he very nearly pulled it off. It's just that in the course of studying the family I was supposed to infiltrate, I noticed that they were all vastly more likeable people than the asshole who had hold of my leash."

He tilts his head. Meditation's kind of being ignored, sorry meditation. He'll get to you later, really. "... And you slipped the leash?"

"Shot him," Mark says succinctly.

"That was very brave," observes Revan.

"Eh, I guess."

Nod. "And then you were summoned by the murder cult?"

"Spent a while roaming the galaxy playing surreal pranks on the Barrayaran intelligence agents who were following me, first."

... Revan cracks up. "Surreal pranks? Such as?"

"Break into hotel room, completely cover bed in neat rows of dried beans, leave without a trace."

"Thank you. I try."