"Do I look like most people to you, Byerly Vorrutyer?" Sonia says with an affected air of affront, complete with hand to her chest, but she puffs out her breath and shrugs, letting her head loll to the side. "By the time I figured it out, I was done being pissed off with you. I'd spent weeks boiling in resentment and anger, and I lost my taste for it. And the truth was much more palatable than the worst of the lies I'd been fed. If things hadn't gone the way they did...well. It doesn't matter, does it?"

She gives him a slight smile. "I prefer the man who plays magic tricks with his character in service to Barrayar to the more or less honest coward who would turn his back on it. And," she says, her voice going softer, the syllables curbed as the liquor starts to make her mouth clumsy, "it wasn't all lies. Not to me, anyway. Back there, you told me that our friendship was real. Even in the midst of all those lies, you told me a single, critical truth, without which I...I don't know if I'd have weathered that time as well as I did. And by now I think you'd have a hard time convincing me otherwise."

She holds out a hand; whether for his or the bottle, it isn't clear. "You seem to take offense whenever I imply you're a good man, Byerly, so let me be more specific: you are a good man to me. You are a man of honor to me. You can lead the others to think what you like. They can all go suck an egg, for all I care."