Without Enchantment

Chapter One

And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

We are all here by accident. Like the roses.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, "The Mountains of Mourning"

Babysitting, Snape grumbled to himself as he boarded the train.

There was a chance that his actions today would have an impact throughout the wizarding world, he thought, as he moved with the crowd down the aisle, his eye on the black-haired head two yards in front. He might be protecting the life and health of the one person Voldemort would most like to see dead; he might be risking his own life and career in the process; but in the end that was what it came down to: babysitting. Harry Potter was off to a secret destination in Cornwall to visit his godfather, and it was Snape's self-assigned task to be certain he got as far as Plymouth, in one unworthy, ungrateful, unenlightened piece.

The Dursleys had, of course, been useless, although they had taken Potter to London and dropped him at Paddington Station, happy to be rid of him for the rest of the summer. It was their Muggle resistance to sensible methods of home heating, however, that had eliminated the expedient use of Floo powder for Potter's transport. Arabella Figg had a real fireplace, naturally, but her house was locked up tight, its owner missing along with her feline army, and Snape was certain Voldemort had a watcher on Privet Drive. The Knight Bus had been taken out of commission for the duration of the war, Portkeys were untrustworthy, Potter was not yet licensed to Apparate, and Sirius Black was afraid to stir far from his hiding place to fetch him, as there was still officially a warrant out for his arrest. So Potter had bought a train ticket with Muggle money owled to him, and Snape was sitting on a Muggle train five rows behind him.

He was beginning to regret his hasty decision, however. It was true that no other Hogwarts staff or members of Dumbledore's trusted cadre were available to Apparate to London at an hour's notice; all of them were engaged in the war work that Snape's own role as double agent denied him. But this role also made it inadvisable to be seen in the vicinity of Potter, especially as any sort of protector, and it would take smooth talking at the utmost level of his well-practiced skills to convince Voldemort he had been acting in the Dark Lord's interests.

As he tugged at the unaccustomed snugness of the dark trousers he had assumed for this journey, and picked at the collar button of his charcoal-coloured shirt, Snape rehearsed his story, a large part of it true: he had intercepted a message delivered by owl for Minerva McGonagall, telling her that Potter would be visiting Black in the West Country (the message had specified Cornwall, but Voldemort didn't have to know that) and would be leaving by train the afternoon of that very day, July thirtieth. He had invented an errand to Diagon Alley, and, once in London, had made his way to Paddington and caught the train, carefully avoiding Potter's notice. What Voldemort would not know, he hoped, was that Snape's "losing" Potter in the crowds at Plymouth would be purposeful, as well as contingent on seeing Potter met by someone friendly. The journey and its interim destination would be a tidbit of useless information for Voldemort's forces, and what Snape presumed would be a reasonable excuse for his accompanying Potter, even though as an agent pretending loyalty to the Dark Lord he should really have called on the services of a fellow Death Eater for this pursuit and remained in his assigned position at Hogwarts. Perhaps, though, his known personal animosity toward Potter would explain his impetuousness.

He raised his eyes cautiously from the Muggle newspaper he held, peering at the back of Potter's seat and the tuft of black hair visible above it. He was sworn to protect the boy, an oath he did not intend to break, and personal feelings had nothing to do with it. Nothing, he said to himself firmly, as he handed over his ticket to the guard and received the mutilated remains back, even if the last place on earth I want to be is in the same railway carriage with him. "The boy who lived": and for that extraordinary achievement, we are all supposed to roll on our backs and wave our paws in the air. Ha.

Snape shook himself from his reflexive sneering contemplation and took in his surroundings, prepared to note any suspicious behaviours on the part of the passengers, although he had to admit he knew little about Muggle behaviour, suspicious or not. The young man sitting next to him, twitching oddly and humming, was listening to music, Snape believed, through that apparatus on his head; and the woman across the aisle, with lacquered hair and an astonishingly short skirt, was evidently communicating with someone through the small device she held to her ear, unless she was mad. Snape could see no one who looked like a witch or wizard, but then he hoped very much that he resembled a Muggle himself, and assumed that anyone assigned to capture Potter would take on an equally careful disguise. Potter himself looked quite at home here.

One of the many disadvantages to Muggle clothing, Snape had found, was the lack of places to keep a wand. His was in the leather briefcase stowed between his feet. Not easy to get at, but then he could hardly use it anyway in a train crowded with non-magical people. As a precaution, he was carrying two phials of potion in his trouser pockets, one of which was a swift and deadly poison; the other produced nasty welts on contact with skin and could potentially be dashed in an enemy's face, although he thought it unlikely he would be able to use it. He reached down to check the security of the briefcase's latch once again, and winced at the pain between his shoulder blades, a burning ache produced by continual tension.

There was a dreadful tedium about this sort of work. He would be sitting here for hours yet, not allowing himself very much in the way of distraction, beyond the newspaper and his own thoughts, and not doing anything to attract Muggle (or wizard) attention; and yet he would have to be ready at a second's notice to prevent any attack on Potter, without revealing his loyalties. This sort of thing, he mused, was never covered in Defence Against the Dark Arts classes: now, if I were teaching it... Speculation about how Hogwarts students would react to a lesson in the realities of counterespionage provided a few moments' ironic amusement, but then he was left with nothing but scandals in Muggle politics, dull ruminations about the stockmarket, and letters to the editor about the ethics of "cloning," which appeared to be a Muggle version of Polyjuicing, albeit with a more permanent effect. Snape found this last quite foolish, as who in his right mind would want to be a sheep? Then he closed the newspaper and turned to observing his fellow passengers, an activity that bored him silly after half an hour, as did the Muggle conversations around him. The air in the train was stuffy, the effort of keeping alert was increasingly difficult, and the hubbub of a hundred small noises made him feel that he was being gnawed to death by Flesh-Eating Slugs. He found himself wishing idly that something would happen, before dismissing the notion as possibly unlucky and certainly not desirable. Sighing, he took up the paper once more, wondering if a Muggle crossword would prove a challenge.

The train plunged into a tunnel, and Snape shut his eyes against the flickering, dimming lights and listened to the rushing sound of its passage, which drowned out the dull murmur of complaining Muggle voices and the tinny muffled noise of tuneless music. He would prefer to keep his eyes closed for a while, he thought. Then the rushing noise suddenly grew louder, sounding like the sea, and after building to a crescendo was replaced in an instant by absolute dead quiet. Snape froze, opened his eyes, and found himself... in a garden.

Roses scented the air, and tree branches heavy with blossom drooped around the flagstone path where he stood, its edges blurred by creeping plants growing from rich soil. Through an arbour covered by white, fragrant blooms he could see a green lawn, lit with a brilliant sun, sloping away beyond a regimented arrangement of shrubs. The silence was mesmerising, peaceful, and timeless; even the melody of birdsong and the resonance of insect hum were absent. The air was replete with a compulsion toward stillness, as though the slightest movement would disturb the balance of this tranquillity, knock loose the equilibrium, start the heart beating again.

Snape took a shuddering breath, and as he did so, heard a single bumblebee buzzing to his right. He wrenched his head in that direction, and, beyond the bed of roses where the bee, immune to repose and stagnation, was going about its business, he caught sight of a stone staircase leading to an enormous and highly ornamental chateau. The building seemed at least as large as Hogwarts, from what he could see of it. Where was he? And how? You could not Apparate without knowing it; he had picked up no Portkey. He had been on a Muggle train, for Merlin's sake, approaching bloody Bristol, reading the Times.

Which had been -- oh, hell -- left behind in the train... along with the briefcase containing his wand.

A rush of panic, and the feeling of nakedness that accompanies a wizard's separation from the major prop of his magical self, was followed by a chill in the pit of his stomach as he realised that he had left Potter unprotected. He was accustomed to working alone, to isolation and improvisation, but this sense of helplessness was new, and left his mind blank and his heart pounding.

He stepped cautiously away from the building, in the direction of the lawn, thinking only that he might manage to ascertain his location, and then try to find his way somewhere where he could re-board the train; he had forgotten for the moment that he was not alone in the world and was taken aback when a group of men rushed out of the shrubbery and seized him.

Not Death Eaters, was Snape's first thought, unless Voldemort has suddenly acquired a passion for the military-- and then he was struggling in the hands of the uniformed men, evidently guards of some sort; managing to wrench himself from their grasp, he took off running. Through the gasping of his own breath, he heard a buzzing noise behind him; paralysis seized him as though he had been Stupefied. He fell headlong across a flower border, and knew no more for some time.

* * * * *

When he came to himself again, nauseated, dizzy, and bruised down one side, he was strapped to a chair in a small room with the trappings of an office, and a young-looking, thin-faced man in an olive-green uniform was regarding him thoughtfully with icy blue eyes. "Awake now?" the man said in a brisk tone. "Perhaps you'd like to answer a few questions, then."

Snape, swallowing impotent fury, focused his gaze on the man's collar, where two pins in an Egyptian-looking design gleamed alongside red rectangles, and kept his face stony. He did not break his silence while the man snapped out a series of questions about his identity and origins and the objects found in his pockets, handed over by one of the guards at the door. "Curious," said the man, jingling the coins in his hand and examining the phials of potion, "and damning."

"He had no identification, sir," put in the guard, handing over the leather wallet Snape had carried as part of his Muggle disguise; it held only a ten-pound note and the stub of the train ticket, which the officer was now holding to the light and examining with interest.

"No, I expect not," he responded. "Thank you, Sergeant." There was something oddly familiar about this man's voice, Snape thought: or not the voice itself so much as the accent, which combined clipped consonants and guttural vowels in a way Snape knew he had heard before, somewhere. "London to Plymouth," said the man casually, reading the train ticket. "How... historical."

He ran a quick appraising glance from Snape's cordovan footwear up past the now-dirty knees of his trousers and to the collar of his shirt, lingering disapprovingly on the dark hair that hung loose over his neck, and then turned quickly to one of the guards. "Sergeant," he said, "please alert the doctor that we will be conducting a fast-penta interrogation, and send a message to Colonel Lord Vortala informing him --" He was interrupted by a knock at the door; it was opened by one of the guards, who quickly snapped into a salute when he saw the visitor, and then lowered his hand in embarrassment.

"At ease, Sergeant," said a light amused-sounding voice. "When will they ever learn, eh, Lieutenant Cecil?" The source of the voice came into Snape's view then, a slight man with greying hair and an inoffensive appearance, dressed in a dark suit of an unfamiliar but extremely well-tailored cut. "Lady Alys and I have just been lunching with the Emperor, and he happened to mention that you... oh, I am sorry; I didn't mean to intrude." The lieutenant did not attempt a salute, but he did bring himself to a position of attention in a noticeable way; the newcomer evidently possessed some indefinable measure of authority which was not visible to Snape's untutored eye.

"Sir," reported Cecil, "this man was picked up in the South Garden a short while ago; he has no identification and refuses to give his name, and, as you can see, his appearance is rather odd. He was carrying only off-world money, these," holding up the phials, "and this," and he handed over the ticket stub. The older man looked at it, and raised his eyebrows. "I was just about to send the Sergeant for a doctor, to conduct an interrogation," went on Cecil, looking questioningly at his civilian visitor, who waved a hand in seeming approval; Cecil nodded to the guard, who saluted and left the room.

Snape tensed as the man who held such mysterious power approached him, smiling in a friendly manner. "Good afternoon," he said. "I'm Simon Illyan. This, as you may have gathered, is Lieutenant Cecil; and you are...?" Snape turned his head away, refusing eye contact and reply. "Well, I don't blame you," continued Illyan quietly, but with a core of ice in his voice that made Snape cold down to his bones. "But Imperial Security does not deal with... interlopers... kindly, you know. Especially now. I would advise you to speak voluntarily; you will be telling the Lieutenant everything you know shortly, anyway, and it would make both of us feel better if you gave us some answers before the doctor arrives." Snape looked straight into Illyan's eyes then, lips tight, providing the challenge his adversary apparently did not expect. "No?" asked Illyan, raising an eyebrow. "Well, then, Lieutenant -- if I could have a moment of your time --" and the two men left the room, leaving Snape with the other guard. He could hear murmurs of conversation in the corridor, and genial laughter, and was given considerable time to remember what he had learned in the past about resisting torture, and how difficult it was.

Then a third voice joined the others outside the door, and Illyan and Cecil reentered, along with a brown-haired, middle-aged woman, also wearing a uniform, whom Snape took to be the doctor. She was carrying a solid-looking case, which she placed on the desk and snapped open, revealing a glittering display of instruments. Illyan looked expectantly at Cecil, who cleared his throat and spoke to Snape with a forced courtesy. "Captain Illyan tells me," he said, "that I should inform you we are about to inject you with fast-penta, under the influence of which you will answer all of our questions."

Not torture, then: a truth drug, something like Veritaserum, thought Snape, wondering if torture would have been preferable. The doctor approached him, holding a strip of plastic, from which she peeled a small, burr-like patch. She nodded to Cecil, who unsnapped the restraint from Snape's left arm and unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt. Snape attempted to resist, but Cecil held him firmly. The doctor pressed the patch to the inside of his wrist, then removed it, beginning to count under her breath. When she reached sixty, she examined his wrist closely, then nodded again. "He's clear," she reported to Cecil brusquely. "No allergy."

"The hypospray, then, Doctor," replied Cecil with a touch of avidity, and she returned to the desk, retrieving two pointed devices from her case. Snape wondered irrelevantly why potions masters never tested for allergies before administering a dose. It would, of course, defeat the purpose in some cases. The doctor returned to him and motioned to Cecil, who rolled Snape's sleeve up to his elbow, then let out an exclamation. "What the hell is that?"

Over the last months, as Voldemort had grown in influence and power, Snape had found the Dark Mark on his arm becoming clearer in outline, darker and frequently painful, reasserting itself like an incurable cancer as the Dark Lord made stronger claims on his supposed loyalty and asked him to prove himself more frequently. The significance of the skull-shaped mark would be lost on these people, but Snape realised that even to Muggles it could look threatening, especially if they were already suspicious of his intentions. He tensed, producing renewed pain across his neck and shoulders. "Well," said Illyan's calm voice, as he peered at Snape's arm, "how decorative. Something else for you to enquire about, Lieutenant, once the drug takes effect."

"Sir," said Cecil, the courtesy as forced as when he had spoken to Snape, "wouldn't you like to... I mean..."

"Oh, no," said Illyan, "he's all yours. Not my job any longer. I might forget what to say." There was an odd note of pain in his voice.

"Lieutenant...?" said the doctor, and Cecil nodded at her. She pressed one of the hyposprays against Snape's forearm; he felt a slight pressure and heard a hiss, and then the doctor began counting again, this time backwards from ten.

"Nine... eight... seven..." At first Snape felt no reaction to the drug, but then, despite all his efforts to the contrary, his muscles began to relax, his breathing slowed, and the pain between his shoulder blades diminished. "Six... five... four..." Unexpectedly, however, his consciousness did not dim, but seemed to escape its isolation in his brain and expand, as though every fact he knew, every belief he held, all the answers to all the questions of his life were housed in identifiable places throughout his body, and all he required was a stimulus to send his conscious mind out, like a spider running along its web, to fetch them. "Three... two... one." And he was happyabout that, happy to have all the answers, to track them down wherever they might be concealed, flush them into the open, and offer them up. He no longer had to hide anything; there was a massive feeling of relief in that knowledge, a release from pain and guilt. He suddenly knew what the Jobberknoll bird must feel like in its last moments, as it broke its life-long silence and let out a cry full of every sound it had ever heard.

Cecil's voice was welcomed into his ears, first the left one, and then the right. "What is your name?" Cecil was asking him. He had the answer to that one; he found it where it was sitting in his right forefinger, and brought it out: Severus Snape. He thought he had said that only to himself, but apparently his mouth was cooperating with his ears, because Cecil was nodding, and asking another question. "Where do you come from?"

That one was harder. There were so many answers. He pulled out the oldest one, the one that seemed most eager to come to the surface, from its home in his left knee, and presented it with a flourish. "Cheetham Hill. Manchester." Cecil looked at Illyan blankly.

"Let me rephrase that," Cecil went on. "Where were you just before you came here?"

That was obvious; the answer was on the tip of his tongue. "A garden," he said, somewhat smugly.

Cecil sighed. "Before that," he said.

"I was on a train," Snape answered, pulling the answer off the top of his head. "Outside Bristol." The answer unravelled for quite a while; it was longer than he had thought. "I was in the third carriage. The train was almost full. There was a man there listening to music. He kept twitching. Perhaps the music hurt him. You would think he'd stop listening then, wouldn't you? Unless someone was forcing him to keep listening --"

"Stop!" said Cecil. Snape stopped, the ribbon of his response snipped off suddenly. But the rest was there, if Cecil needed it; he could pull out more, and more. There was a clue there, too, if only he could find how to get hold of it. His hands twitched slightly. "Do you think he's far enough under?" Cecil murmured to Illyan, but Snape heard him and answered archly, from the instep of his right foot, "Oh, yes." Illyan nodded, a smile playing around his lips.

"Tell me about the skull on your arm," Cecil said to Snape, and that confused Snape's anatomical reference points for a moment, but then he looked down at his arm and the answer came right out of his eyes.

"It's dark brown, and about an inch wide," he said, considering carefully, "and it has a snake coming out of its mouth. Sometimes it's darker, and sometimes you can't see it at all --"

"Stop!" said Cecil again, and Illyan muttered, "Too literal. Try 'what does the skull mean?'" Cecil opened his mouth to ask the question, but Snape had already found the answer.

"It means death," he told them pleasantly. "And loyalty. And fear." A picture of the skull formed in his mind, but it was gigantic, a glowing green, floating in the sky. There was a voice that came with it. "It belonged to Lord Voldemort," he went on, watching his interrogators with curiosity as they stiffened suddenly.

"Say that name again," said Cecil intently, and Snape obliged. Both men relaxed, but also seemed perplexed. "Did he send you here?" Cecil asked after a few seconds' silence.

"No, I don't think so," replied Snape, after consulting his lungs (this required several deep breaths, which seemed to annoy Cecil); and then he added as a bonus, "He wanted me to stay at Hogwarts."

"Where is -- no, never mind. Why did you come to the Imperial Residence?" asked Cecil next.

"I don't know," said Snape -- really, the man asked such easy questions -- and then one of the words that had dropped into his ear stuck somewhere inside, and he pulled it loose and looked at it. Imperial.Of or pertaining to an empire or emperor. From the Latin "imperium," empire, and "imperare," command. Related to imperative, imperious... and there was a blinding flash of light in his mind, and Voldemort's voice pronouncing the Imperius Curse, and suddenly he knew what was happening to him, and he gritted his teeth and tensed his shoulders again, and tried to bring his errant consciousness back into his head where it belonged. But it was dragging its feet and whining, and then Cecil was speaking again, and he could not keep the words out of his ears.

"Are you here as a spy?" The answer forced its way out between his lips, and it had to be I don't know again, because of course he was a spy, but he didn't know why he was here. "Are you an assassin?" Cecil went on, and that answer came out of his gut, an agonized, ripping Yes, because he was, he had killed people, he had used spells and potions on them and they had died; although somewhere there were other answers, other things that he was, and he wished Cecil would ask about them, because he would like to know too. He thought he might feel better if he knew. He let his jaw relax, and his shoulders, and he did feel better. But somewhere under the floating feeling of relaxation and the bouncy fetch-and-carry nature of his new consciousness, he knew that what they had done to him was degrading. The Imperius Curse needed to be resisted, and he knew how to do it. He just couldn't manage to want to.

"Who are you here to assassinate?" continued Cecil's voice, relentlessly, and Snape could only shake his head, because he couldn't find the answer to that one anywhere, except that he knew it should be whom, and told Cecil so. "Are you here to assassinate Emperor Gregor?" Cecil went on, ignoring him.

Snape's diffuse consciousness searched for quite some time, before locating a response to that question in the hollow above his clavicle, and it didn't seem quite right when he found it; but he brought it out anyway, thinking they might be playing the word association game again. "A little stiff and taciturn at times," he said, imitating somebody else's voice, "but quite fun when you get him to relax."

Cecil looked dumbfounded at this response, but there was a hint of a smile teasing Illyan's lips, and it was his agreeable voice that took up the questioning next, preempting Cecil by seconds. "Wherever did you hear that?" he asked, and, as Snape opened his mouth to reply, interrupted him to rephrase his request, "I mean, who told you that?"

One recalcitrant corner of Snape's mind tried to remember what that achingly familiar expression was on Cecil's face, while the rest of him searched for the answer to Illyan's question. He was surprised to find it in the tense place between his shoulders, and wrenched it out with difficulty, feeling considerable reluctance even to believe that it was true. "Vorkosigan," he said. "And it was in my bedchamber," he added for good measure.

Illyan hissed slightly under his breath. "Which Vorkosigan?" he asked urgently, speaking over Cecil's attempt to retake control of the interview.

"Lord Mark Vorkosigan, he said he was. He was very short, and he ate a ham sandwich and quite a few pastries," Snape answered, wondering why Illyan looked so worried. Cecil beckoned to the sergeant and then whispered something in his ear; the sergeant left the room, and Cecil turned to Illyan.

"We'll have him in here, sir, if he's in Vorbarr Sultana. We never should have --"

"Don't jump to any conclusions, Lieutenant," said Illyan firmly. "The Viceroy and Vicereine trust him, and I have no reason to act against their judgement." He turned to Snape again. "Did Lord Mark arrange for you to come here?"

"Not," said Snape hesitantly, seeing his reply flicker in front of his eyes, "as far as I know." He closed his eyes, to stop the annoying flashes of light, and heard Illyan's voice continuing, asking how long he had known Lord Mark, and the answer popped out of his left thumb, eager to make itself known -- four months and eight days -- but his right humerus was telling the thumb that Illyan wanted to know how many hours Lord Mark had been with him, and at the same time what was left of his brain finally realised where he was. With all the competing messages his mouth grew so confused that he bit his lip, and with the pain the tension and the clarity came back, and he looked Illyan in the eyes and said, "No."

"No?" Illyan repeated.

"No, I won't answer any more of your questions," said Snape, and then he bit his lip again, to keep it firmly closed. The answers could find their way into his mouth from any part of his body now, but they couldn't get past the barrier of his teeth. Illyan motioned to the doctor, and she brought out another hypospray, presumably to give him a booster dose of fast-penta, but Snape pulled his freed left arm away from Cecil's grasp, and then their struggle was interrupted by the sergeant, who reappeared at the door.

"Lord Mark is in the Residence, sir," he said to Illyan, "in the kitchens." A fleeting thought about house-elves ran on little cat feet between Snape's ears, and Illyan's lip twitched.

"I assume he knows his presence has been requested?" Illyan asked, and the sergeant replied in the affirmative. "Then since our prisoner has proved uncooperative, I believe we'll wait to see what Lord Mark has to say before proceeding with the interrogation." Cecil dropped Snape's arm with a muffled curse, but he and the doctor seemed to accept Illyan's order without question, and took their seats. Each member of the party sat silent for some moments: the doctor with her hands quietly folded in her lap; Cecil crossing and re-crossing his legs, and fidgeting with objects on the desk; Illyan taking notes on a small handheld device; Snape coming more and more back into his own self, the links with obscure regions of his body vanishing one by one, and tightness and anticipation filling him, along with anger and a sense of violation.

There was a firm knock on the door, the guard opened it, and a small solid figure came barrelling into the room. "What the hell is up, Illyan?" said a familiar voice. "I was told this was some sort of emergency --" and then he saw Snape, and his face paled. "Oh, shit," he said, sinking into a chair.

"You say that every time you see me," Snape commented dryly, pleased to the point of absurdity by the appearance of Vorkosigan -- or Lord Mark, as he supposed he must call him here. Whatever he had been before, he was now an ally, perhaps his only one.

Lord Mark rubbed his eyes and looked at Snape again. "Well. Now you know how it feels, Professor." He smiled oddly. "Welcome to Barrayar."

"So I gather you two do know each other," Illyan said quietly. "My lord, this man Snape was taken prisoner a short while ago in the South Garden; he was carrying two bottles of what could very well be poison, although he had no other weapons; and he has admitted under fast-penta questioning that he is an assassin. When asked about Emperor Gregor, he produced a rather disrespectful quote which he attributed to you; not," with a cold humour, "that verbal respect for personages has ever been the hallmark of any Vorkosigan, but it did indicate a prior acquaintance, which you have, in fact, just confirmed."

"And you have what to do with all this, Illyan?" said Lord Mark dangerously.

"I am still the Emperor's subject,"Illyan answered, his voice taut.

"So am I," replied Lord Mark, "which I know has always been a source of frustration to you, Illyan; but I am Barrayaran enough not to break my name's oath to my liege lord. Unless you want to bring Gregor into this directly -- and I believe he has enough distractions at the moment -- I'm afraid you'll just have to trust me." He looked at Snape, then back at Illyan. "Have you given him the antagonist yet?"

"No," said Illyan, "but he is resisting --"

"Technically, though," Lord Mark broke in, "he is still under fast-penta. How about if I were to finish the questioning for you? Thank you." He rose and turned to Snape. "Are you here to kill Gregor?" he snapped out.

"No," said Snape, not feeling in the least influenced by fast-penta.

"Are you here to disrupt the Imperial Wedding?" asked Lord Mark briskly.

"No," Snape repeated, making note of a new piece of information.

"What were you carrying those bottles for?" went on Lord Mark.

"None of your bloody business," answered Snape, and Lord Mark laughed.

"Now that's an interrogation for you. Administer the antagonist, please."

The doctor hesitated, but Lord Mark gestured decisively in her direction, and Illyan waved a lazy hand; the hypospray hissed against Snape's arm. It made very little difference to the arrangement of his consciousness.

There was a moment's silence in which Illyan looked pointedly at Cecil, who seemed in a daze; then he shifted his attention. "Thank you, Doctor," he said, very blandly, "for your services." She gave him a sort of half-salute, nodded to Cecil, and, retrieving her instruments and case, left the room; an audible snort sounded from the corridor.

Cecil stood and spoke for the first time since Lord Mark had entered the room, addressing himself to Illyan: "Sir, we can't let him get away with this -- there are too many things left unexplained --" His protest sounded unfocused, disconnected.

"It is, of course, your decision, Lieutenant," commented Illyan, sitting back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest. "I apologise for attempting to insinuate myself back into the chain of command; old habits die hard. I am, personally, inclined to take Lord Mark's word at its face value." Which was, Snape thought, a highly ambiguous statement. He rather liked this man Illyan.

Lord Mark looked intently at Illyan, and breathed out, "Thank you, I think. Remember, Illyan, you still owe me."

"Ah, but do I remember?" replied Illyan, smiling gently. "That's the question."

Lord Mark looked, for once, chastened; it was Cecil who spoke next. "My lord," he said, "do you vouch for this man Snape?"

"Not really," said Lord Mark, smirking slightly, "but I'm afraid he's probably my responsibility, in some sense. And if I take him home to Vorkosigan House, at least there's an ImpSec perimeter and loads of Armsmen to deal with him, if he gets out of hand. You want him away from the Residence, right?"

Cecil began again, "My lord --" but Lord Mark interrupted him.

"All right, Cecil. I swear by my word as Vorkosigan that I'll keep Snape out of your hair. And, I hope, out of trouble. Will that do?"

Cecil drew a deep breath and let it out, then walked over to Snape. "All right, my lord, let it be on your head," he said. "Take him." He bent and released Snape from the restraints. Snape rubbed his arms, and stood slowly, trying not to waver on his feet. Cecil handed back his money and wallet, but not the phials of potion; those went into his own pocket.

Lord Mark bowed, rather ironically, to Cecil and Illyan. "Since my business here today is more or less concluded -- I'll just leave the menu for tomorrow's breakfast as a surprise for Gregor and Laisa -- I think we should be on our way."

He headed for the door, and Snape followed. On an impulse, he turned at the doorway and nodded to both men. "Good day, gentlemen," he said icily, "and thank you for your kind attentions." Cecil turned away, but Snape caught a flash of acknowledgement in Illyan's eyes.

In the corridor, Lord Mark grinned wolfishly at him. "Professor Snape, somehow I'm certain you're dying for a cup of tea. And Ma Kosti's pastries are simply... magical. Let's go home."