She considered the familiar conundrum inherent in complimenting a child for doing something well in the course of what ought not to have been done at… - Lois McMaster Bujold

Once, she had been her parents' daughter. Then great, unlucky Ias's wife. Her children's mother. At the last, her mother's keeper. Well, I am none of these things now. Who am I, when I am not surrounded by the walls of my life?

"Cecil flashed a grin. "Quite. Plus your rather irritating habit of treating your superior officers as your, ah..." Cecil paused, apparently groping again for just the right word.

"Equals?" Miles hazarded.

"Cattle," Cecil corrected judiciously."

You are a most excellent lawyer, for a dead man.