Nestled deeply in the rose bushes behind Vorkosigan house, Elena Bothari, eight-year-old daughter to Sergeant Bothari, held her breath and prayed that young Lord Miles wouldn't find her.

The hyperactive little boy, only a few months younger than her, had been hunting Elena all morning, trying to coerce his often-unwilling playmate into participating in one of his latest schemes, which more often then not ended in spectacular disasters. Like the tank incident, or the flowers that got guillotined, she remembered.

She shifted her knees in the crumbly dirt and tucked hair behind her ears. It wasn't that she disliked Miles, it was just his talent for creating trouble that irked her. He could be a lot of fun, although he tended to go to extremes in everything, (the mock firing squad really hadn't needed a real stunner to "kill" a dummy)
Although she was fairly certain that this wasn't intentional, Elena was sometimes the one to take the fall when an indiscretion was discovered. Another scapegoat was Ivan; Miles' cousin who was fair game for going along with schemes that often got him into trouble.

Not that Miles' parents were unfair. On the contrary, they were very impartial, the Countess sometimes frighteningly so. However, much of the household was a teensy bit hesitant to report Miles to his parents, as he was disadvantaged in a few glaringly obvious ways.

Elena signed and hugged her knees. The eight-year old wondered how much Miles was bothered by his medical problems. She found it hard to imagine what it would be like to fear that a simple tumble could shatter a fragile bone.
She certainly had seen him break enough of them to gain a secondhand appreciation of the pain it caused.