Chapter Ten
Tej was plainly distracted and unnerved by her new surroundings, but by diligent efforts, Ivan won back her full attention in bed that night, and a smile when he brought her coffee in the morning. He had not guessed that any of his morning practice placating bleary-eyed admirals would transfer, but that one did. His plans for a post-coffee rematch were thwarted, however, by a call from his mother informing him that she was sending Cristos and her formidable dresser-cum-secretary to escort Tej and Rish on a hunting-and-gathering expedition for Barrayaran garb. Granted, the subject had come up last night, but he’d thought it was small talk.
“Is it safe to go out?” asked Rish, both dubiously and longingly. The building had a well-equipped exercise room on the second floor, but being immured inside was perhaps a little too much like being trapped aboard the JP-9 all over again.
“Gotta be. Mamere and her people enjoy more attentive security than any Jacksonian House lording could ever hope to buy. On account of what she’s done for Illyan, y’know. ImpSec worships her, at least the old guard. And the newbies are all their daunted subordinates.”
“I didn’t notice the coverage, last night,” said Tej.
“You wouldn’t. And neither will anyone who attempts to stalk you, till it’s too late. You should go,” he told the women, wondering why he wasn’t more relieved to be let off the hook as sartorial escort. “You won’t get a better native guide, except maybe Mamere herself.” Who had duties at the Residence this morning or else, she had implied, she would have undertaken the task personally.
The middle-aged and gimlet-eyed dresser expanded upon this. “Clothing is a cultural and social language,” she intoned, when shepherding the women out. “And local dialects can be tricky for an outsider to interpret. We must make sure your dress says what you mean it to say, and not something unintended.”
Tej and Rish, at least, looked very impressed. If they were like every other woman Ivan had known, he was certain to be treated to a fashion show afterward anyway. This was much easier than tagging along, as all he had to do was approve each garment with suitable compliments, instead of frantically trying to guess which choices they wanted him to endorse, with the distinct hazard of guessing wrong. Much more restful.
He sent them off with a clear conscience and turned to his strangely silent and empty flat. He had three weeks of personal correspondence and other chores to catch up on that had not been urgent enough to be tightbeamed after him to Komarr, which was most of it.
He was half an hour into these tasks when a call came in over his comconsole which, after a glance at the sender ID, he sent to voice delay. After another few moments, the display above his vid plate flickered and gave way to a smiling, or at least smirking, face he didn’t especially want to deal with. Damned Imperial Auditor override…
“Hi, Miles,” Ivan sighed, and waited. No point in stirring any waters not already roiling.
“Sorry for the interruption”—Miles did not look in the least sorry—“but I must not be behindhand in conveying my thanks for the extremely thoughtful gift you forwarded from Komarr. Ekaterin actually wondered if she should put flowers in it, next time you came over, but I suggested target practice. Or passing it along to the twins, which might be an even faster way to dispose of it. At which point the light dawned, and she looked very relieved.”
“Hey, it took me half an hour to find that vase!” said Ivan in mock-indignation.
“Hidden in the back of the store, was it, lest it frighten away customers?”
Ivan’s lips twitched. “Yep.”
Miles leaned back, his smile stretching in an unsettling way—that is, if you knew Miles. “I also understand some very unexpected congratulations are in order.”
“News gets around fast,” Ivan grumped.
“I was in on it from the first day the reports started coming in. Your mother called me to ask me to explain it to her, as if I would know anything—I told her to apply to Allegre, which she did, apparently to more satisfactory effect.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not my fault,” muttered Ivan.
Miles’s brows rose, most annoyingly. “You married a woman you’d known barely a day, and it wasn’t your fault?”
“Well, it wasn’t! It was an accident. And anyway, it’s only a temporary expedient. If you’ve read the ImpSec reports, you know why. She was in danger.”
“I heard various recaps, from various people.” Miles drummed his fingertips on his comconsole desk.
“My mother talk to you this morning?”
“No, not her. In any case, I have called to invite you to bring your blushing accident and her blue—she really is bright blue?”
Ivan nodded.
“—and her blue companion to Vorkosigan House this afternoon for a get-to-know-you Ma Kosti tea.”
Ivan hesitated, concealing the small spurt of saliva that spontaneously appeared in his mouth at any reference to Miles’s famous cook. Damned conditioning. “That’s bribery.”
“As an Imperial Auditor, I am only above taking bribes, not handing them out.”
“You’ve never shown an interest in any of my girlfriends before.”
“You’ve never married any of your girlfriends before, Ivan. And in any case, I’m off to Sergyar soon for what may be an extended stay, so I don’t want to miss my chance.”
“To roast me? You’ll doubtless have others.” Get in line.
“Ah…” Miles took in, and let out, a long breath. “Make that requests and requires your attendance. Someone else wants to meet her, in an informal setting. We figured my library would do. Doubling up on my mission planning at the same time.”
Ivan paused, his heart sinking. “Oh.”
“Sixteen-hundred sharp.”
“Uh, right. Sharp.”
“See you then.” Miles cut the com in his best grandiose My-Lord-the-Imperial-Auditor-dismisses-you style.
There was really no call to whimper. But Ivan wanted to.
* * *
Tej sat in the passenger side of Ivan Xav’s sporty two-seater groundcar, with Rish balanced awkwardly on her lap, and fumed in terror.
Gregor, he’d said. As if it might be just any Gregor off the street, and not, say, the absolute ruler of three worlds, as far above a Great House baron as a baron was above a gutter grubber. Mister Lord Ivan Xav Oh-I’m-not-anyone-important had led her astray, Tej swore, for the last time. And now she was being semi-forcibly carted off to meet Gregor, no, THE Gregor—oh, yeah, no, he wants to meet you—in about the most diametrical opposite of hide-and-be-sought-by-no-one as she could have imagined. No, she couldn’t have imagined this. Tej felt as if she had laser targeters dancing all over her skin.
And the Imperial Auditor Coz was scarcely better. She’d barely had time to look up the definition of the title before having to get ready. The man had the power to order summary executions, for pity’s sake.
At least she and Rish were dressed well for it. Lady Alys’s expert had guided them to a semi-custom shop, the sort of place where one had a personal laser scan and then spent a happy hour poring over the vid catalog and experimenting with various virtual try-ons upon one’s three-dimensional holovid replica, before selecting garments to be made up on-demand, to fit exactly, by computerized fabricators. The dresser had dubbed the results ‘casual,’ which Tej eventually realized simply meant not suitable for an Imperial function or ambassadorial ball. They had returned burdened with bags to Ivan Xav’s flat, where the dresser had reported judiciously to the waiting husband, The new Lady Vorpatril has an excellent eye for color. Having experienced the dresser in action, Tej took that as no small compliment. And then Ivan Xav had dropped the news, or bomb, of where they were going next…Had Lady Alys known?
Ivan, with a glance aside at his stacked and glaring passengers, took the next corner with improved caution, and then slowed, thank the hovering fates. A tall stone wall topped with iron spikes sped by, and then he slowed some more, turning in to a short space in front of broad wrought-iron gates. A man in a strange brown uniform with silver embroidery on the collar and cuffs, flanked by a second in black, with silver frosting ditto, emerged from a kiosk and approached the groundcar. Ivan Xav raised the canopy, and they peered suspiciously in. “Ah. Lord Ivan.”
Ivan Xav raised a hand in greeting. “And two guests, as per.”
The man in black, unsmiling, aimed some sort of scanner at Tej and Rish, then nodded.
“You are expected.” The man in brown and silver waved them on as the gates swung open.
A huge archaic-looking stone pile of a mansion—four stories high—rose above the Earth-import trees, almost bare of leaves in this turning season. Ivan drove in under a porte-cochère, parked, raised the canopy, and helped Rish and Tej extricate themselves. The dresser’s tutorial on what styles a woman wore for what hours and occasions had been swift but thorough. The Barrayaran-style calf-length afternoon skirts were no more awkward to manage than Komarran loose trousers, Tej was pleased to discover; with some practice, they might even prove more comfortable. The faintest vibration from an invisible force screen shielding the house faded momentarily, carved wooden double doors swung wide, and yet another man in brown and silver motioned them through into a spacious, two-story-high entry hall. An elaborate wooden staircase with a polished banister swept down from a gallery above. Wide archways opened to the right and the left, with a lesser archway under the gallery straight ahead.
Rish stopped short; Tej nearly tripped over her. The hall was stunningly paved in a marvelous colored mosaic like a stone garden underfoot, wildly proliferating with plants and flowers, insects and small creatures peeking from the leaves. The stonework was so fine it looked at first glance like a master’s painting in oils. Tej half-expected the plants to crunch underfoot, giving up strange perfumes. The walls carried the theme skyward, with meticulously hand-painted vines and flowers madly twining, as if the living forest on the floor surged up to reach for the light.
Rish was riveted. “Oh,” she said. “I could dance the most amazing dance across this…”
A shrill squeal sounded from the right, and a man’s light, amused voice, “’Ware escapee!”
Ivan Xav jerked and swung around. He muttered in alarm under his breath, “Oh, God, they’re moving on their own now.” From the archway, a stark naked boy-child not much over two feet high toddled determinedly, as fast as his little legs could carry him. He was pursued by an even more startling figure. The man swinging a cane who limped after the child was less than five feet tall, shockingly short for an adult Barrayaran male, which he obviously was. Dark hair neatly cut, a slightly oversized head set on a short neck, faintly lined face, hunched shoulders, fine white shirt, gray trousers and matching jacket—and if Tej had thought Alys and her Simon had borne a palpable presence, this man’s authority filled the hall, drawing the eye away even from the astonishing floor and the happily shrieking child thumping across it.
The toddler stopped dead, staring up at the strangers. No, staring at Rish. “Ooh,” he cooed, mouth falling open in flattering wonder.
“Ivan, grab Sasha,” the short man ordered, a trifle out of breath.
Ivan Xav stepped forward and gingerly scooped up the child, holding him out well away from his body and handing him off as quickly as possible to the short man. The toddler squirmed like a large pink starfish, reaching out toward Rish and repeating “Ooh, ooh!”
The short man informed Ivan Xav, “Sasha has learned three new tricks this week: how to divest his diaper, how to get lost in Vorkosigan House, and how to outrun me. If only he would take up talking, like his sister, I’d dub him a proper little genius.” He then, with difficulty, brought his wristcom to his lips around his unwieldy and resisting burden. “Ekaterin? Found him. Stand down your patrol. He broke cover in the dining room, but was cut off at the pass in the front hall.”
“So where is his partner in crime?” asked Ivan Xav, bending to look warily around at floor level.
“Sleeping. They take it in shifts, you know, trying to wear us down. I think they’re aiming for unconditional surrender and total world domination. But I can hire shifts too, hah!” He gave up attempting to hold the heavy wriggler and set him on the floor, where the child’s attention was caught by a bug in the mosaic; he attempted several times to pick it up and put it in his mouth, without success, and made a moue of frustration.
A tall, breathless, dark-haired woman scuffed rapidly down the staircase. She said to the short man, “How in the world did he manage to get down the stairs without breaking his neck?”
“Crawled backward, I believe. He’s actually surprisingly cautious. I broke an arm and a leg on those same stairs, once. Well, sequentially. Different years.”
“I remember the arm,” muttered Ivan Xav. “Competitive banister-sliding.”
The woman gathered up the boy, one arm firmly supporting his little bottom. They made a rather more proportional combination. “Hi, Ivan,” she said, and raised her brows invitingly.
Ivan Xav broke out of his infant-induced paralysis, and said, “Miles, Ekaterin, may I make known to you my wife, Lady Tej, and her companion Rish. This is my cousin Miles and his wife Ekaterin, Lord and Lady Vorkosigan.” He peered uneasily at the child. “And his heir, Lord Sasha.”
“Ackle,” Lord Sasha remarked gnomically, reaching up to dislodge a hank of his mother’s sleeked-back hair and chew on it.
Lady Ekaterin smiled in distraction. “Welcome to Vorkosigan House, Tej, Rish. I’m so glad you could visit before we have to leave.” She added aside to Ivan Xav, “I’m taking the twins to Sergyar to see their grandparents while Miles is about his affairs.”
“Nikki, too?” asked Ivan Xav.
She nodded. “He’s not too happy about having to do all the make-up work for school, but he’s tremendously excited about the travel.” She added over her shoulder to her husband. “Miles, why don’t you take them on into the library, and I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
The burdened woman trudged back up the staircase, and Lord Vorkosigan gestured them to follow him through the archway to the left. On the far side of a large antechamber with walls covered in pale green silk, double doors painted white were swung open by an unseen hand. Their host ushered them into a long room lined with antique bookcases. Tej’s station-bred eye was briefly shocked by the orange flicker of a fire, burning tamely in a white marble fireplace—no, not an emergency here, just décor. A pair of short sofas and some other chairs were grouped invitingly around the hearth. Upon one of the sofas, a lean, dark-haired, rather hatchet-faced man looked up from his viewer at their entry, stood, and waited with a grave smile. He was dressed in one of those Barrayaran faux-military suits, dark blue and very plain.
“Sire,” said Ivan Xav, as they herded up.
“Hi, Ivan. But I’m doing Count Vorbarra today,” said the man, his smile turning briefly saturnine. “It cuts down the circus by at least half.”
“Right,” said Ivan Xav. He was apparently growing introduction-fatigued at the most inopportune time, for he went on far too casually, “Gregor, my wife Tej, her friend Rish. I suppose you read the reports?”
“I had Allegre’s précis. And I talked in person with your mother this morning, which was rather more informative.” He turned to the women. “How do you do, Lady Vorpatril, Mademoiselle Rish. Welcome to Barrayar.”
He said this in the exact same way that Lady Vorkosigan had said, Welcome to Vorkosigan House. It came to Tej that he was the one man here who was not a subject. Did that make him an object…? He sat, apparently the signal for everyone else to do likewise. Ivan Xav gathered Tej to him and seized the other sofa, Lord Vorkosigan swung his cane out of the way and dropped into a smallish armchair, and Rish perched gingerly on a similar one.
Rish had to be madly trying to parse the many unfamiliar scents, of which the wood smoke was the strongest and strangest. There were two more men in the black uniforms standing statue-like in the room, one by a pair of glass doors at the far end, apparently leading outside, the other at the wall by their entry. They looked back over the two women like a pair of sleek guard dogs studying a couple of cats that had strayed onto their territory. As if they might grab them in their teeth and break their necks with one sharp shake, if their doggish reflexes were triggered by a wrong move. Tej tried to sit extra-carefully, and not let her fur stand on end.
The emperor of Barrayar leaned back at his ease, one arm stretched out along the top of the sofa, and asked genially, “So, Lady Tej—how did you come to meet our Ivan?”
Tej glanced wildly at Rish, whose stark, stuffed expression returned, This one’s all yours, sweetling. How far back was she supposed to begin? She swallowed, grabbed Ivan Xav’s hand for luck, and started at random: “We’d run out of money, trying to get to—” Wait, should she—but he said he’d talked to Lady Alys, how much of—
“Trying to get to your brother on Escobar, as I now understand it?” said The Gregor.
Tej gulped and nodded. “We were stuck downside on Komarr, dodging what we think were hirelings of the Prestene syndicate. I was working at this grubber shipping store, trying to rebuild our stake, and Rish was in hiding at our flat. Ivan Xav brought in this vase, wanting it packed and shipped—” To here, come to think. She looked up at him in belated indignation. “Hey! You bought that horrible thing on purpose just to have an excuse to come into the shop, didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “Well, sure.”
“We were just closing. He tried to pick me up.” Tej scowled in memory.
The Lord Auditor Coz pressed a hand to his lips, briefly. “What, and failed?”
Tej nodded again. “Then he turned up on my front steps. I thought he might be a capper stalking me. So I invited him in, and Rish shot him.”
The cousin jerked slightly. The emperor’s eyebrows went up.
“Stunned him, sweetling,” Rish corrected, urgently. “Just a little light stun, really.”
“And then we dragged him up to our flat,” Tej went on.
“This wasn’t in the ImpSec report,” said The Gregor.
“It wasn’t relevant by then,” said Ivan Xav, in a distant tone. “Forgive, forget…”
“So we tied him to a chair for the night,” said Tej.
The Lord Auditor Coz made a strange little wheeing sound. He was biting his own hand, Tej noticed. Ivan Xav pointedly ignored him.
“Which proved to be very lucky,” Tej forged on, “because when the real kidnappers turned up, we woke up and heard them talking to him and were able to get the drop on them.”
“That wasn’t luck,” protested Ivan Xav. “I engaged them in delay as loudly as I could, till the reinforcements came up. Rather slowly.”
“Quick thinking—for a man tied to a chair,” murmured the Coz.
“Well, it was!” said Ivan Xav.
“Anyway,” Tej plowed on, “he invited us to hide out in his flat for the next few days, which worked fine, till the Prestene contact thought of putting Komarran Immigration onto us, to smoke us out of hiding so they could target us. So Byerly, who came to warn us, and the Immigration officers, and those Dome cops who were trying to arrest Ivan Xav for kidnapping me, which he didn’t, all arrived at once before anyone had drunk any coffee, and then Admiral Desplains called Ivan Xav, very irate about the Dome cops, I think, and I was so tired and scared, and we—we panicked.” She glanced at Rish. Still no help there.
“Quit laughing,” said Ivan Xav irritably to the Coz, who actually wasn’t, out loud at least, except for the madly crinkling eyes. “It wasn’t funny at the time.”
Ivan Xav glanced aside at Tej, and his hand squeezed hers. She squeezed back. No, it hadn’t been. Not that part, not at the time.
In retrospect, though…“So he threw his wristcom into the refrigerator, grabbed this box of instant groats, and asked me to marry him. To keep the Immigration people from arresting me and the Dome cops from arresting him. And I said yes.”
“I see,” said The Gregor. “I think…”
“It worked,” said Ivan Xav, sounding stung.
“Why did he throw his wristcom into the freezer?” asked the Coz, diverted by this detail.
“His admiral kept calling back.”
“Ah. Makes perfect sense.”
“It does?” said The Gregor. The Coz nodded, and he seemed to accept this.
“And then Ivan Xav brought us here to Barrayar, where we are supposed to find this man named Count Falco who will give us a divorce, and then…” Tej ran aground, till she bethought herself of the kind and shrewd Lady Alys. “And Lady Alys’s Simon suggested that Rish and I might be smuggled to Escobar on a Barrayaran government courier vessel, if Ivan Xav would ask the right people.” She gathered her courage and looked up from her lap at The Gregor. “Would that be you, sir?”
“Possibly.” He leaned over and propped his chin in his hand, regarding her quizzically. He had one of those wildly unfair male face-transforming smiles, she noted, even more so than Ivan Xav’s; but then, The Gregor’s smile was transiting from a much sterner-looking start-point. Ivan Xav had to work hard to look stern, and even then it was more likely to come out just peeved. The emperor continued, “Where on Escobar is your brother?”
This was not the time to try to deal, Tej realized; this whole meeting was a deal. A big one, at that. “Amiri was never happy in the House, never wanted to be involved in the business with my brother Erik and my sisters. He had this passion all his life for biology and medicine, so eventually my parents made a deal for him to go to Escobar to this clinic where they had a special contact, and change his identity and finish his medical education. He’s a graduate researcher there, now, under a new name.” She moistened her lips and added, “It was always the plan that if something terrible happened, I would go to him, because we always got along best, and my sisters would go to Grandmama.”
The Gregor stretched out his arm and drummed his fingers on the sofa back. “Given that Shiv Arqua’s Jacksonian parents are both listed as long-deceased, this would have to be your Cetagandan haut grandmother, General ghem Estif’s widow, exiled to Earth?”
“Good God!” said Ivan Xav. His hip being pressed to hers on the short sofa, Tej felt him start. “She’s still alive?”
The Gregor looked across at him in some bemusement. “Didn’t you read the ImpSec reports?”
“Didn’t figure they’d disgorge ’em without arm wrestling. Besides, I spend all day every day up to my eyebrows in Ops reports for Desplains.”
“But there were all those evening—never mind,” said The Gregor. Tej wasn’t sure if he was looking at her or Ivan Xav or both, but a ghost of that smile went past again.
“But ghem Estif’s widow—she was on Barrayar back during the Occupation, and nobody still alive remembers that,” said Ivan Xav. “She must be over a hundred and twenty years old, at least! Mummified!”
“About a hundred and thirty,” said Rish. “If I recall correctly.”
“Did you ever meet her?” Ivan Xav asked Rish. But his glance went to Tej.
Tej replied, “After the old general died, she came to live with the Baronne and us for a while. When we kids were all younger. She left almost eight years ago. I haven’t seen her since—but she wasn’t in the least mummified then. She wasn’t young, of course, and her hair had turned this fascinating silver color, meters of it, it seemed like, but she was perfectly limber. And tall. And very dignified. It was like—it wasn’t that she couldn’t move fast, it was simply that she didn’t choose to.”
A smile of memory flickered across Rish’s lips. “That was her.”
There was a bustle at the door to the antechamber, and Lady Vorkosigan—Lady Ekaterin?—entered, followed by two maidservants with not so much a trolley as a train of carts loaded high with a bountiful formal tea. Everyone came to attention, even The Gregor. The two black-clad guards were already at attention, but every once in a while their eyes flicked longingly toward all the clinking and gurgling going on around the fireplace. It was not until coffee, two kinds of teas, a dozen sorts of little sandwiches and cakes and tarts, freshly candied fruits, marzipan dainties, and miniature and rather messy cream cakes were served that the conversation resumed, limping around the chewing and swallowing. Rish was nearly mesmerized with sensory bliss.
“Ma Kosti is always especially inspired by one of your visits, Gregor,” Lady Ekaterin told the emperor, who smiled.
“Don’t even think about it, Gregor,” said the Coz.
“I suppose an Imperial military draft would be cheating,” replied The Gregor with a sigh, and homed in on his third cream cakelet.
Everyone was amused. Except for Tej and Rish, who were bewildered. Tej nudged Ivan Xav, but he was chewing, too, and just shook his head. “’Splain later,” he mumbled. “Miles defends his cook with his life.”
The Coz washed down his bite with a gulp of tea and told his wife, “Just before you came in, Lady Tej was starting to tell us about her Cetagandan haut grandmother, the late General ghem Estif’s relict. She was apparently on Barrayar toward the end of the Occupation, if you can imagine. She must have been close to old General Piotr’s age.”
Lady Ekaterin nibbled a frosted cherry, licked her fingers, and nodded. “Oh, Ivan, you’ll have to introduce Tej to René and Tatya Vorbretten when they get back to town.”
Giving up on Ivan, Tej looked her question at the Coz.
He waved a cucumber-and-cream-cheese sandwich expansively in the air, and said, “Count Vorbretten. Bit of a scandal a few years back, when a gene scan turned up that he was one-eighth Cetagandan ghem. On the male side, unfortunately for Barrayaran inheritance law. Dating back to his great-grandmother and the Occupation, it seemed.”
Ivan put in, “They were dubbing him René Ghembretten for a while, but the Council of Counts finally voted to let him keep his countship. A near thing, it was. I was glad of it. Exceptionally nice fellow.”
“Exceptionally diligent District count,” said The Gregor.
“Now that gene scanning has become widely available,” said Lady Ekaterin to Tej and Rish, “quite a few such hidden links are being turned up. Despite huge pressures at the time from both sides against such crosses. The Occupation lasted for two decades, after all.”
“Humans will be humans,” said her husband. “And so make more humans.” They exchanged amused smiles, which fell rather short of private.
“René’s case is hardly unique, as far as inter-Nexus romances on Barrayar go,” said The Gregor. “Miles’s mother Countess Cordelia is famously from Beta Colony, as was Ivan’s—and Miles’s—great-grandmother who married the celebrated diplomat Prince Xav.”
Tej turned in surprise to Ivan. “You’re really one-eighth Betan? You never said!” Rish’s gold eyebrows, too, went up.
Ivan Xav shrugged. “Can’t say as I much think about it. It was a long time ago. Before I was born.” He topped this unassailable observation with a marzipan violet, and chewed defensively.
“This medical clinic on Escobar that took your brother the Jacksonian refugee under its wing, the one with the special contact with your late parents…” the Coz said slowly, returning to a subject Tej had hoped was lost in the shuffle.
She stiffened.
“It wouldn’t by chance be the Durona Group, would it?” he went on.
Rish gasped, a glazed orange segment dropping from her hand as she stared in horror. “Did ImpSec know all the time?”
“Apparently not,” said The Gregor, looking up with a scarily keen interest.
“How did you know?” Tej demanded. It was a secret she’d almost died to protect…
“Informed guess.”
“Mark’s Durona Group?” Ivan Xav looked indignantly at Tej. “You could’ve stood to have said this earlier!”
“What do you know about them?” Rish, still tense with alarm, asked the Coz.
“Quite a lot, for my sins. They were once a division of House Fell, a group of thirty-six cloned siblings with extraordinary medical talents. Their progenitor-mother, Lily Durona, who is also on the high side of a century old, I believe, had some special relationship with old Baron Fell that I never did quite understand. In any case, my clone-brother Mark helped buy them out some years back and arranged for their removal to Escobar, a planet and polity I understand they find considerably more congenial than their House Fell techno-slavery, however much they were valued back in the Whole. Were your parents allies of old Fell, then, Lady Tej? Or of Lily Durona?”
Tej looked wildly at Rish, who opened her hands as if to throw the question back. Tej tried, “My parents were always…I believe they and Fell often found each other useful, yes. There was never a formal alliance, or any question of a merger, though.”
The Coz tapped his fingers on his chair arm, his lips pressing together for a moment. “Hm. My brother Mark is a silent investor in the Durona Group, but by no means a secret one. I believe he and his partner Kareen are on Escobar right now, in fact, busy about their affairs. Mark is quite the entrepreneur of the Vorkosigan family. Has several successful—and a couple of unsuccessful—start-ups down in our District, as well.”
“Anything worth achieving,” muttered Ivan Xav under his breath. “God, even the clone…”
“The-Count-our-father approves—the Vorkosigan’s District has lagged economically ever since the Occupation, unfortunately. And several of the later civil wars were disproportionately hard on us, as well.” He tapped some more. “But the thing is, Lady Tej, this connection of mine is also a connection of Ivan’s. If you meant to go to ground secretly with the Durona group…”
“Are you saying now we daren’t go?” asked Tej anxiously.
“No. But I am suggesting that your identities and perhaps appearances might need to be rather better laundered than you originally thought.” He glanced at Rish.
She glowered back. “You seem to know an awful lot about the Whole, for a Barrayaran.”
The Coz shrugged. “I visited it several times in my career. My earlier career, that is, before I became an Imperial Auditor. In any case, Barrayar tracks the five Great Houses that control the Whole’s jump points rather more closely than we track the general mob of Jacksonians. House Fell most of all, because of proximity. Less of Cordonah Station, as our interests don’t extend much in that direction—we have more economically efficient routes to Earth via Sergyar and Escobar. The fact that the jump point from the Whole into the Cetagandan Empire’s back door is controlled by House Prestene is, ah…a feature of some interest.”
“What earlier career?” asked Tej.
He eyed another cucumber sandwich round, popped it whole into his mouth, and chewed and swallowed before replying. “I was an ImpSec courier for a few years, before I was discharged for medical unfitness. I did a great deal of traveling throughout the Nexus.” He looked up and smiled at his wife. “Rather got it out of my system, to tell the truth.”
Lady Ekaterin’s return smile grew lopsided. “Did you indeed?”
Tej turned again to The Gregor. “But the ride, sir?”
The emperor rubbed his jaw. “I’ll drop a word in Allegre’s ear. Ivan and he can discuss the details.” He paused, looking her and Ivan Xav over thoughtfully. “Note, it could be some weeks before a place opens up. We cannot delay scheduled or emergency business for this courtesy.”
Tej nodded, trying to seem cooperative. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“Ivan’s perimeter has already been notified of the new threat level,” The Gregor went on.
“If…if the syndicate’s agents track us here, can your people stop them?” asked Rish.
The Gregor’s dark eyebrows flicked up. “They’re expected to be able to stop much worse.”
“If they’re not blindsided,” the Coz put in. “You need to give the poor security fellows as much of a fighting chance to protect you as you can. That means no more withholding information, eh?”
Tej nodded, her throat tight. Ivan Xav felt her hand tremble in his, and frowned at her in worry. She remembered all too clearly the death of their bodyguard on Fell Station. She’d barely known the man, and yet…Among the many, many reasons she’d never wanted power in the House, to play the game as her parents had, was that she’d never wanted her life to be bought at the price of another’s. Maybe no one was free of that, really. Or else what were police forces and armies all about, on places like Pol or Komarr? Mass protection, jointly purchased by an entire society, instead of piecemeal by those who could afford it—without even the up-front rewards that Jacksonian enforcers and security people routinely demanded, and were given, for assuming such risks.
The guard beside the door to the antechamber spoke for the first time. “It’s seventeen-thirty hours, sire.”
“Already?” The Gregor glanced at his wristcom, then looked apologetically at Tej, Rish, and Ivan. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go. I still need to have a few words with my Auditor, here, before we travel our separate ways.”
Lady Ekaterin stood up smoothly. “Perhaps Tej and Rish would care to see a little more of Vorkosigan House before you take them home, Ivan. And I could show them the Barrayaran garden.”
Ivan Xav’s nod endorsed this, and they made what Tej hoped were correct formal farewells and followed their hostess out.
In the front hall, Rish’s steps slowed as she stared downward. Her hands twitched, as if she wanted to bend and touch the art underfoot. Or dance across it, pinwheeling. “Is this a recent installation?” she asked Lady Ekaterin. “It’s so beautiful. And unexpected. It looks new…?”
Lady Ekaterin smiled, obviously pleased. “When Miles and I were first married, he encouraged me to put some stamp of my own on the house—I mean, besides the Barrayaran garden. It took me a long time to decide what. Then one day my mother-in-law was telling me about some unhappy events that she always associated with the old black-and-white marble tiles that used to be here for, oh, decades, and I thought of this.” She gestured in a sweeping arc, from the lavish floor to the lush walls.
She went on, “I was born and grew up on South Continent, where such fine work in natural colored stones is very much a regional art form—the north favors wood as a medium. There was a famous stone mosaic artist whose work I’d adored for years, but could never afford. Miles flew down, quite suddenly one day, and practically kidnapped the poor woman out of her semi-retirement. I worked closely with her on all the botanical details—it took over a year to design and install, not to mention walking the Vorkosigan’s District to collect as much suitable stone as could be incorporated. It represents a mixed native Barrayaran and Old Earth ecosystem—just like some places around Vorkosigan Surleau, at the foot of the mountains.”
Ivan Xav vented a short chuckle. “When they broke up the old floor, people took the fragments away as historical souvenirs. I saw some of them for sale for an ungodly amount of money, later. If you’d thought to sell ’em yourselves, Ekaterin, you could have funded the whole replacement with the proceeds.”
She laughed, too, but said, “I suspect the fresh start suited everyone better.” She turned to Tej. “Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan is very close friends with Ivan’s mother, you know. Cordelia has frequently mentioned to me how much she treasured having a woman friend, when she first came to Barrayar as a bride and a stranger, to show her how to go on here—all those things the men didn’t know. At least there’s no war on, this time. Perhaps when Miles and I get back from Sergyar, we can visit again…?”
A heartbreakingly kind offer, Tej thought. She smiled, but shook her head. “We don’t expect to be here that long.”
“Ah,” said Lady Ekaterin, with a curious glance at Ivan Xav. “That’s a pity. Well, let’s just take a stroll through the dining room wing, and then we can go out the back and around to my garden…”
When Tej had first set foot on Barrayar, she’d felt she couldn’t get away again soon enough. Now, after less than two days, even the nebulous plans for their departure in unknown weeks seemed to loom up before she was ready for them. It was as if the whole blasted planet was bent on seducing her…Odd thought. She shook it from her head, gripped Ivan Xav’s anxiously proffered arm, and followed her hostess.