The first thing Miles says on seeing the coat is, "As a long-time beneficiary of the art of deceptive tailoring: damn, you're good."

Cam snickers. "It helps that I didn't have to learn to sew. Do you require any deceptively tailored clothes you do not already have?"

"I have this irritating urge to decorate," says Cam. "Mural, crystal chandelier, rug, an actual bookshelf for actual books. I will try to restrain myself. Is this a good time to perform the stunner test or would that be awkward in some way?"

"Nah, we might as well," says Miles. "It's not as though we're oversupplied with things to do on the way to Komarr. If you give in to your decorative urges, please make it something that can be packed up and taken with us when we leave the ship."

"Noted. Do you have a stunner or the ability to obtain one or shall I produce the model of your choice?"

"Shall I pretend I'm about to steal your soul? I've never actually done the soul-stealing act before but I have seen it reenacted before an audience of thousands for our viewing entertainment."

Miles snickers. "Pass, thanks. All right, ready to possibly fall unconscious and wake up with a hangover or possibly have nothing happen to you at all?"

"Yeah. Name a substance good for the hangover?"

"Any decent painkiller will help." And boy, does Miles know from painkillers. "Try syntha-morph, it's not exactly standard but I'm very fond of it, it has yet to make me hallucinate and that's a rare distinction."

"Not a standard I'm likely to require, but okay, noted. Hit me."

Miles fires his stunner.

And Cam goes over like a sack of bricks.

Cam rolls over groaning after about three, then sits up, rubbing his eyes. "That was interesting."

"Yeah," says Miles. "And you recovered about five times faster than normal, that's definitely interesting. How's the hangover?"

"Dosed, fading, I am afraid I'm not gonna be your source on clean data about how long it'd take to go away by itself."

"I've had my share of stunner hangovers. Believe me, I understand."

"Your painkiller of choice isn't bad," Cam adds.

"Oh good."

"So if you ever get a rogue daeva threatening to do nefarious things just stun 'em. Every few minutes till they can be dismissed."

"Yep. Good plan. And as a last resort if dismissing them doesn't work, somebody can always take them on - aheh - a wormhole jump to hell."

"Yeah. Although just like I'd want to check if I can make a wormhole, an angel might be able to redirect one, and it's possible a fairy could just go straight through one bypassing the usual business with the jump equipment, if they were sufficiently void of other things to do with their time. I wouldn't want to try installing my own jump-related brain piercings, but if I were stranded and displeased about it..."

"My thinking is more that, if a daeva managed to survive a deliberately screwed jump, there's no guarantee that they'd be able to emerge into normal space at all. And if they did, it could easily be hundreds of light-years away from the nearest human habitation, and they certainly wouldn't be accompanied by any objects whatsoever. Which means no way to detect wormholes, let alone interact with them, unless you've been holding out on me about what your magic powers can do. I mean, you have a reasonable understanding of what a wormhole is, but I don't think you've talked to many five-space engineers - could you find your way back to Barrayar in less than a human lifetime if you were stranded naked at an effectively random point in space somewhere nearish this galaxy?"