[There's something to that- being told that she has a friend. She doesn't have many of them in general, but especially not here. So the declaration draws a touch of a smile to her mouth.] If you didn't, I'd be exceptionally displeased.

[And she means it. She has too many balls in the air, even if the time she has left on her cover is wearing thin as surely as Byerly's had. They both let impatience get the better of them. And if the only comfort she could offer Byerly was being there when they fast-pentaed him, doing what she could to steer the conversation from the worst of it? She'd do it. She leans her shoulder into his with a sigh, blue eyes looking upward.] After them.

[There's a pause, a quiet moment, and her voice is small and quiet.] They'll probably kill him. Once they interrogate him, I'm not sure there's going to be much use left for a Barrayaran spy. Unless Sei opts to use him as further testing for the gene complex extraction, but given the complications that have already come up, that could just be a different kind of death sentence.

[She doesn't like the words, which is obvious as soon as she says them. Warning: there may be An Emotion here.]

Well, I don't think Sei knows about the work Diya and Amai were doing with the Ba before her arrival. The Ba are strictly the province of the Haut, and so Diya was very clearly breaking the rules of the Star Creche. And I get the sense that her ambitions are not to stay here playing Queen to Zahal for the rest of her life, which means that such a revelation would ruin her. So all I need to do is convince Diya that getting fast-pentaed means she goes down with me. I force her to protect me to protect herself.

[Nat might not be good at staying still. But at the end of the day, she is good at her job.]