There's something about the woman. By touches his lips as he squints at her, trying to place what it is. She's not a local - you can always tell a hill-woman, with her broad swinging gait and her firm placement of her feet - but she is a Barrayaran. Those features are Barrayaran. The genteel refinement of her steps and her bearing hint at Vor, he thinks - even By, good as he is, can't be sure of Vor at fifty paces, he has to get ten or closer to be sure - but he hasn't seen her up at the camp. She's not one of Piotr's high-born refugees. So who...?

Well. Only one way to find out.

He sets off. Then, a few feet in front of her, he pretends to stumble, goes down to one knee - hisses in a good imitation of pain, clutching at his ankle. "Damn these mountain roads!" he snarls, and trusts that the woman's good-samaritan instincts will kick in.