Pym

Pym is identified as Miles Vorkosigan’s Armsman in the closing scene of Miles’s return from Komarr to Barrayar. At Vorkosigan House, Pym joins Miles and Ma Kosti for a kitchen supper, an informal setting that contrasts with Miles’s usual public role. Pym is especially amused when Miles jokes with the cook until she laughs and playfully snaps at him with a towel.

Appearance at Vorkosigan House

The scene places Pym among the household’s familiar company on a quiet late-winter evening. After Miles arrives home, the kitchen gathering also includes Ma Kosti and, at the end of his guard shift, Corporal Kosti, who is fed and plays with the kittens near the stove. Pym’s brief reaction gives the domestic exchange a light touch, but the evidence does not provide further details about his background or later role.

Characterization in the Closing Scene

Pym has no dialogue or separate objective in the available scene; his characterization rests on his amused response to the exchange between Miles and the cook. That reaction makes him a participant in the household’s ease rather than a formal observer, and gives the playful towel-snap a witness whose amusement confirms the joke has loosened the evening’s usual roles.

A Place in Miles’s Chosen Household

The supper also sits between two forms of company: that evening Miles eats with his Armsman and Ma Kosti, while he decides to invite Duv Galeni, Delia Koudelka, and the rest of the Koudelkas to dinner the next day, deliberately choosing them as guests. Pym’s presence in the kitchen places him within the household’s immediate, informal circle as Miles begins shaping a wider social life at home.

From Household Ease to Private Ritual

The closing sequence moves from the shared kitchen to Miles Vorkosigan’s wine cellar, where he ceremoniously opens his grandfather’s oldest and rarest bottle, finds it turning bad, and pours it down the sink before choosing a much newer vintage he knows is good. Pym belongs to the warm, joking supper that precedes this private decision; the contrast leaves his brief appearance anchored in the living household, while Miles’s rejection of the spoiled bottle closes the scene on a choice of present reality over symbolism.