Over the following week, they watched the next series of Cordelia Naismith's memories. The first two evening's episodes were rather slow-paced, or at least not full of dramatic fight scenes, and would probably have been cut from a holodrama – but, Anakin realised, this was why holodramas didn't reflect life very well. In the first vial on the first evening (they usually had time to watch three per night), Cordelia, still getting used to being a Barrayaran lady, and Aral, getting used to being the man who was about to be Regent when the old Emperor finally died, met the Emperor's daughter-in-law, Princess Kareen and her four-year-old son Gregor. Kareen's dark hair was dressed in just as complex a style as Leia Organa's – what was it about princesses and hair? Unless you were the sort of princess who regularly changed places with her handmaiden, the way Padmé did, and the hairstyle rather than the face was what indicated 'princess' to the public.

Not that Kareen could have convincingly changed places with her handmaiden, a 1.8m tall, muscular blonde woman (there didn't seem to be many blond Barrayarans) who, in addition to being Kareen's handmaiden and Gregor's nanny, was also their bodyguard and Gregor's martial arts instructor, but longed to be a real soldier the way Cordelia (briefly) had been, the way Barrayaran women weren't allowed to.

Anakin wondered whether he had missed something when the very brief next scene showed the bodyguard, Droushnakovi, arriving at Vorkosigan House, seconded to Cordelia's service. Had Cordelia and Kareen played a game of dice for ownership of her? Then he remembered that, here, servants weren't slaves. Judging by the blonde guard's expression, she had asked to be sent to Cordelia because she wanted to spend time with the Betan lady soldier, the way Anakin as a child had longed to be a Jedi – and probably also because she fancied Lieutenant Koudelka, who was now Aral's secretary.

The next two phials passed with more scene-setting. Cordelia and Droushnakovi went to buy a swordstick as a present for Koudelka, to console him about his injury. (Not a lightsaber, of course, but just an old-fashioned piece of sharpened metal – yet apparently, on this planet where soldiers carried plasma arcs and nerve disruptors, it was illegal for commoners to own a sword. It felt like all those jokes about how, somehow, an Ewok armed with a tree branch could defeat a fully armed and armoured Stormtrooper.) Aral and his friend Count Vortala negotiated with some of the other Counts who distrusted Aral's politics. It seemed that, although Barrayar had an Emperor, it was more oligarchy than a dictatorship like Palpatine's Empire, and was ruled by a Council of Counts who functioned like a hereditary version of the Senate, and argued just as much. And yet – if the Emperor announced that he wanted a unanimous vote for Aral Vorkosigan as Regent, only five men out of the council of seventy-five dared abstain from the vote.

Anakin thought back to the conversation about Barrayaran politics that Aral and Cordelia had been having in the first memory this evening – and the ones they had had in the first series of memories. He remembered guiltily how, when Padmé had tried to talk to him about galactic politics, especially once she was pregnant, he had changed the subject, wanting to seize the little time they had with each other to enjoy each other's company, and talk about the coming baby and whether Padmé was eating enough and how she was feeling. He felt ashamed. Aral Vorkosigan didn't treat his wife as if, now that she was pregnant, she had ceased to be an intelligent adult with whom he could discuss politics. Or, no – face it, Aral and Cordelia were just better suited to each other than Anakin and Padmé had been, mainly because they had been mature enough to find someone compatible to marry.

The only death in the episode was that of Emperor Ezar from old age, and there wasn't a single combat scene. 'Isn't anyone going to shoot anyone?' grumbled Erik, as the third memory finished.

'Isn't anyone going into space?' retorted Spark. 'And aren't there more alien animals here, like the fuzzy crabs and vampire balloons on that other planet?'

'It doesn't have to be that sort of story,' argued Wonder. 'We're learning a lot about the politics of Barrayar. Official party politics in their system of government…'

'And social politics, like classism and sexism and ableism,' finished Spark. 'The way that smarmy shop assistant tried to trick Cordelia into buying an ornamental sword that snaps if you try to use it; the way those young Vor louts were jeering at Lieutenant Koudelka…'

Yes. Anakin had been able to feel Cordelia's amusement at the way the late Rulf Vorhalas's nephews were gossiping about Lady Vorkosigan, not realising that the lady in question was sitting right behind them ('She keeps a low profile, for somebody who's supposed to be three meters tall and eat battle cruisers for breakfast. Scarcely anybody's seen her. Maybe she's ugly,') turn to fury when they dared insult Koudelka ('I don't know who that three-legged spastic is he has trailing him.' 'You'd think he could do better than that. What a mutant. Surely Vorkosigan has the pick of the Service, as Regent.').

Anakin remembered the first time he had been maimed in battle, how he had worried that his career as a warrior was over, and how Obi-Wan had reassured him and encouraged him through physiotherapy exercises as he learned to use his new prosthetic hand. It was hard to believe that within a few years, Obi-Wan himself would be slicing all Anakin's limbs off and abandoning him to burn to death, and that the next time he had to adjust to disability, it would be as a slave under Palpatine's command.

But it was bizarre to imagine that, if he had been in the Barrayaran Imperial Service instead of the Jedi Order, he would have been discharged from military service (unless someone could pull strings to get him reassigned to a desk job – but Anakin couldn't honestly imagine himself helping Jocasta Nu in the library) and expected to shoot himself as being defective meant he was now useless, a faulty piece of equipment to be scrapped. It wasn't that Anakin hadn't always felt that he had worth only as long as he was useful. But he just hadn't expected usefulness to be measured simply in terms of having a physically perfect body.

Still, he had a new right hand, thanks to Hephaestus. It was ready by mid-morning the next day, and Hephaestus advised him to take time off to practise with it, for as long as it took. Anakin had agreed, if Hephaestus promised not to start work on the left hand until Anakin was dexterous enough to help with crafting it.

It wasn't designed to be wired into his body and worn full-time. Anakin had had enough of being a full-time cyborg, living with wires digging into his body, with no opportunity to be free of them except during bacta sessions (and then, the pleasure of wounds healing was always tempered by the knowledge that he would need to be punctured again to re-attach everything afterwards). This was a simple strap-on which connected magnetically with his nerves through his skin, which was less invasive but also meant it would be harder to control. Still, he wasn't only someone with half a lifetime's experience of being an amputee, but also someone with a whole lifetime's experience of being Force-sensitive. Teaching the robot hand what to do was a lot quicker with a touch of telekinesis – and, once he had it trained, hopefully this should become easier than just using telekinesis instead of a hand, which was what he currently felt like doing.

He sat in his hover-chair in the going-to-be-a-garden, practising holding a stick of charcoal to sketch designs on a pad of sheets of real paper (Hephaestus had sadistically prescribed these primitive tools because it was too easy for Anakin to cheat by using telekinesis to change pixels on a computerised drawing device). He could think about decorating his bedroom with star maps, the way he had seen in his shared dream with Severus, later on. Right now, he was concentrating on designs he wanted to draw on his metal arms. He tried sketching Padmé's face, and scrunched up the paper in disgust. It looked nothing like her. He tried sketching his mother, and threw that sheet away as well.

Time to start with something simpler. He took a new sheet, and drew three sweeping curves that interlocked with one another, forming a pattern like a triangle with three convex sides in the centre, with three long triangles each with one short concave and two long convex sides growing out from it. It looked almost like a fish, with the central triangle forming the rear of its body and any one of the long triangles forming its head and upper body, while the other two formed two long tail-fins. In one of the outer triangles, he carefully drew House sigils: the House Vorkosigan maple leaf and mountains for Bothari, the House Slytherin snake for Severus, and – but what represented Anakin himself? Perhaps a split circle with the Jedi winged lightsaber on one side and the Sith cogwheel on the other?

No. He wanted something that represented him as whole, not fractured. Balanced. He drew the three inverted arrowheads that represented the Father (neutral) supporting the Daughter (good) and the Son (evil). (Or was it the other way around?)

Severus, who had strolled into the garden to bask in the sun, and woken up to chase the screwed-up balls of paper around, jumped into his lap to glance at the design. He sniffed it, chirruped in what sounded like approval, and then stalked away, over to the door of the house. He looked back every few paces, and miaowed impatiently, as if to say, Well, are you coming or not? Anakin reached telekinetically for the controls on his hover-chair, remembered that he was supposed to practise doing things by hand, and resignedly fumbled to press the correct buttons for 'Forward' with his new metal fingers. He got there eventually, and managed to make the chair shoot forward – and winced as it banged into the closed door before he could stop it, colliding with the stumps of his thighs. He pushed the button to reverse the chair, and steered it far enough back that he could look at the pattern which Severus had finished scratching on the door with his claws.

It was the same symbol that Anakin had seen Severus scratching on numerous doors and pieces of furniture around the house, like a protective charm. The simple design showed circle, with vertical bars through it. Severus jumped back into Anakin's lap, and pointed his nose at the central triangle in the drawing. His meaning was obvious: This is the symbol you draw in here.

Anakin hoped that Severus might deign to have another shared dream with him that night, so that they could discuss it then. But the first person who talked to him about it was Cheiron, when he arrived in the late afternoon to begin the next session of memory-viewing. 'Oh, wow,' he said. 'Is that the Guarding Dark?'

'I have no idea,' said Anakin. 'Severus thinks I should draw it on my arm. What does it mean?'

'Well – there's a planet where several of Severus's friends here come from, and on that planet, there's a race of near-humans, most of whom work as miners deep underground. And they have a complicated written language of symbols drawn in luminous paint on mine walls, which express ideas to do with darkness. This isn't one of them.'

'Then why…?'

'It symbolises something which doesn't have a mine-sign, because the person who encountered it was a human policeman trapped down a mine, who was entered by a demonic creature called the Summoning Dark. His answer to it was the Guarding Dark: his own internal policeman, keeping watch on his own behaviour to ensure that he did the right thing even when there was nobody to watch him. So – some people think that if the Guarding Dark did have its own symbol, it would look like this. It means: those who are aware of their own inner darkness, and keep it firmly locked up.

'And – Severus thinks that applies to the three of you, does he?' Cheiron went on, looking down at the sketchpad, where Anakin had drawn the circular emblem in the centre of his design. 'Interesting.'

'Do you?' Anakin asked.

'Maybe. As you've seen from the memories, when Konstantine was younger he tended to depend on other people to be his conscience and guard his behaviour, but he's trying to mature beyond that, now.'

'But Severus? He is not the type to become a Sith lord.' Not the type of person who would massacre a whole Muggle village, men, women and children, because he was angry at the way his Muggle father treated his mother. Certainly not a man who would murder Hogwarts students because Voldemort demanded it as a proof of his loyalty. Although – from what Anakin had seen of teenage Severus, when the dreams de-aged both of them to Padawan age, he could certainly imagine Severus being interested in finding out what sort of powers a connection to the Dark Side could give him. Especially if it was his only hope of saving Lily's life.

'You should tell him that – when he's in a position to understand you,' Cheiron said, glancing down at the kitten, who had now fallen asleep again after a strenuous afternoon of chasing and killing paper balls. 'But – like you and Konstantine, he was someone who had had a very hard life from childhood onwards, and had a lot of anger in him because he had a lot to be angry about. It didn't warp him into the sort of person who could use truly evil spells – the kind that require you to enjoy torturing your enemies, for example – so, no, I don't think he ever would have become a true Sith. But all the same, he clearly thinks that he has enough in common with you and Konstantine to fit into this pattern.'