Counts and their heirs, honorably retired from more active Imperial service, were permitted by ancient custom to wear their military decorations on their House uniforms, in recognition of the Vor's official and historical status as—what was that dippy phrase? 'The Sinews of the Imperium, the Emperor's Right Arm.' Nobody'd ever called them the Brains of the Imperium, Miles noted dryly. So how come no one had ever claimed to be, say, the Gall Bladder of the Imperium, or the Emperor's Pancreas? Some metaphors were best left unexamined.

      Miles had never once worn all his accumulated honors, in part because four-fifths of them related to classified activities, and what fun was a decoration you couldn't tell a good story about, and in part because . . . why? Because they'd belonged to Admiral Naismith?

      Ceremoniously, he laid them all out on the brown tunic in what would be the correct order. The bad luck badges like the one Vorberg had just won for getting wounded filled one whole row and part of another. His very first medal ever was from the Vervani government. His most recent high honor had drifted in rather belatedly from the grateful Marilacans, by jump-mail. He'd loved covert ops; it had taken him to such very strange places. He laid out no less than five Barrayaran Imperial Stars in metals of various denominations, depending more on how much salt Illyan had sweated back at HQ during the particular missions they represented than the amount of blood Miles personally had shed on the front lines. Bronze only represented his commander's nails bitten to the second knuckle; gold signified gnawing to the wrist.

      He hesitated, then arranged the gold medallion of the Cetagandan Order of Merit on its colorful ribbon, properly, around the tunic's high collar. It was cool and heavy under his hand. He could be one of the few soldiers in history ever to be decorated by both sides in the same war . . . though to be truthful, the Order of Merit had come later, and actually had been presented to Lord Vorkosigan, not the little Admiral for a change.

      When they were all arranged, the effect was just short of loony.

      Separated into all the little secret compartments, he hadn't realized just how much he'd accumulated, till he put it all together again. No, not again. For the first time.